Be careful not to confuse hard vs soft magic with high vs low magic. Just because the magic is prevalent in a setting does not mean it is necessarily well understood.
That is true, however you would expect people in a setting where magic is everywhere and commonly used in everyday life to have a decent understanding of it, while magic that is very rare would be less understood by the average peasant.
@ also, there is a difference to consider between people in the setting understanding how to use the magic and them understanding how the magic happens
@@ethans9379 Mhm. Not really though. For a pattern to be exploitable in a useful way it needs to follow some kind of predictable pattern, otherwise what good is it if the outcome of an action is random?
Absolutely. Say for instance, if you're going to have a story set partly at Faerie Courts, there's absolutely going to be stacks of magic and it's definitely going to be on the soft side--there will probably be rules of a sort, but they're going to be more ethical or thematic than they are mechanics in the normal sense. You know, stuff about the consequences of giving your word or owing debts or eating in the wrong place (which can also be a sort of debt) and so forth.
Just for clarification: The difference between a hard and soft magic system is, afaik, that in hard systems there are strict rules how the magic works, while soft magic means whenever the writer is stuck, he/she can pull a rabbit out of no hat at all and handwave everything. Like Harry Potter: It gives the appearance of being a hard system, but then she wants to write a time travel story so the hard rules about it go out the window. The plot holes are big enough to drive one of the giant machines from pit mines through, but "hey, look, magic". Otoh there is "hard magic" by Larry Correia in which magic is not quantified at all and there are no spells, but it got a rather strict system how it works and we get explained where it comes from. Or magic in computer games which is by necessity based in maths. Or am I seeing this wrong and the difference is something else?
This is why it bugs me that people still go on and on about how hard magic or soft magic are always better than the other and don't acknowledge that they both have their pros and cons with soft magic is best used in movies and short form media versus hard magic which is better used in a more long-lasting long form media where the magic will be interacted with not just far more often but in a way that lacking explanation could leave irreversible plot holes Beyond this I don't get how this dude doesn't understand that hard magic is in no way dead and that the most you could say is people are learning to weave some soft magic elements into hard magic systems to get the best of both worlds for longer form media allowing for mystery while still actually letting everything have an explanation and a reason but just one that maybe the audience has yet to see or learn or will be learned eventually in the world only for more mysteries and aspects of the magic to reveal itself later
I'll always prefer harder systems. I like learning how a power/magic system works and being able to theorize about possible ways it could be used in the future. For instance, in Avatar the last Airbender once you learn the basics of Earth bending you easily could have thought "So wait, could you then bend certain metals through the bits of earth that are in them?" Same with waterbending, once you understand how it works you could very easily have wondered "The human body is over 70% water so could you bend the water or blood in a person's body?". That's part of what makes hard magic systems so cool, they invite the audience to speculate about possibilities we could see explored later.
Thant's cool, but I prefer softer magic systems because in the universe of the world, magic has likely been a thing since creation, and has been practiced for thousands of years, but plucky teenagers figure out something new about it? That's a kinda conceited thing to buy into. I mean I'm accepting magic, and thats new, but not human nature, which isn't new. If it were possible, humans in this world would be casting magic, using psychic powers, etc. We try; that's human nature. We're inquisitive, if something has been practiced for thousands of years then there's likely not something that's beeing outright overlooked. That's different from science which is constantly being built upon, its like the world only started to become lived in right when we start reading page one and then the cool stuff happens by shrewd inventors or intuitive genuises.
@grifflancer2999 the thing is in these worlds where magic has existed for several years if not centuries it often functions in a similar manner as science for them. New spells are going to be discovered, crafted, and recorded, likely even taught at schools. This is something I always consider when crafting any kind of power system, how would this power change the world in the coming years? People don't like being left in the dark about things and would try to understand magic in every way possible so that in the future it's just another form of science. In reality magic would never be left as this mysterious force that no one understands because humans don't work like that, we will always want to understand that which we currently don't.
@grifflancer2999 in legends of korra it confirms there were ancient skills and techniques that get lost to time through life necessities, and circumstances but i understand ur point
@@MrEffectfilms this to me is the biggest advantage of hard systems. Also from the authors point of view. If you have rules, you encourage speculation between books and increase the discourse about your series between readers as well because they have elements to speculate what will happen next
Just remember that there's no need to 'prefer' when you can just have both. Hell, Arcane has literally hard (solid) magic in hextech weaponry and a literally soft (more fluid) hextech core that seems to have a will all onto its own *The literally hard magic having rules like "these unbreakable hands hit good, have rocket engines on em, and can lift themselves along with very heavy weights...unless the floaty magic power sphere craps out on you and then they're just giant chunks of extremely weighty metal "
I love when hard and soft are balanced. There are rules but not everything is known. As the author you can know all the rules of the magic but not tell the audience everything to avoid the pitfalls of soft magic.
Absolutely, this is my favorite way to make magic, a balance between mysterious and understood, which is often how things work in the real world as well.
@MorgottofLeyendell Yes exactly! Some things are understood but not everything. You are right it feels more real in a way because we never know exactly everything about something and mystery keeps it fresh.
Hard magic systems are "over"? So, Brandon Sanderson doesn't break sales records every time he writes a new book? It's more a matter of writers (or, more specifically, publishers) have given up trying to out Sanderson one another. Even "soft" magic systems need some sort of rules and you often see the hero winning because he pulls some turn of the rules (like Willow making the baby "disappear" so Bav Morda's spell backfires or like the woman who beats the always-victorious gladiator who it's been prophesied will never lose in single combat by revealing she's pregnant). Game of Thrones "soft" magic and Mistborn's "hard" magic existed side by side. I don't see it as much as a pendulum swinging, as simply a matter of what AUTHORS have written books that catch people's attention - and that has far more to do with the characters and stories in the books than their magic systems. People desperately following trends started by another author (which is how you get things like a "hard magic era") are often simply using the trend to compensate for weaknesses in other parts of the story. Both "hard" and "soft" magic have their pros and cons for the story. They both have their costs. They both have their pitfalls. They both can seem contrived or wondrous, commonplace or mysterious depending on how you write them.
“Over” is an exaggeration of course 😅. The point of the video is that hard magic went through a period of saturation the last couple of decades because of everyone trying to be the new Sanderson and now soft magic is on the rise. Brandon Sanderson himself is experimenting more and more with it in the Cosmere. The fact that soft magic is on the rise also doesn’t meant that there isn’t any good recent hard magic stories anymore, it’s just not the same trend as it was last decade. But other than that, I agree with you that both have their setbacks
Bro has to eat by getting people to click on the video and comment. No hate or disrespect but don't take TH-cam video titles so seriously. Exaggerating is part of the game.
Hey, sorry if it looks like I'm a hater, but the title seems a bit click bait... a better one would be how to use soft magic, or something like this. I waited the whole vid for an argument on why hard magic systems are dead and you don't present none, imo. Basically, all soft magic examples are from 30+ years books, all older than Sanderson's, looks like a contradiction. Don't get me wrong, I agree with everything you described in terms of how to use a soft magic system and the benefits of it, but I believe you failed to prove your point. I'm not up-to-date on the new trends, booktok or booktube, I was expecting examples or some kind of data that support the claim that hard magic is losing popularity...
I mean you're not being a hater if you have a valid/presentable view point/argument to back it up (not just feelings) and of course most of these videos are click bait how else do you think these creators stay relevant?
And there's no reason not to have both -- you can have a hard magic system to define the restrictions that the characters operate under, but if don't come out with the details of how it works, you retain the mystery of magic. And nothing I'm hearing in the video to suggest that hard magic systems are bad, merely that the magic system needs to be tied into the world building, instead of feeling as if it's been slapped on the side.
@@DmdShiva the flip side to try to mixing hard and soft magic is to end up with a flabby magic system. Where the reader never knows what to expect and all the solutions seem like deus ex machina. I would rather have two different magic systems, one with defined rules and limitations, and another more mysterious, where the characters use the first to solve the problems, and the second keep the reader and character always at bay. Like Tolkien did, the ring and the magic items they have are hard, gandalf and sauron's power are soft. Or Brandon Sandersons Stormlight Archive, the Radiant powers are harder, old magic is softer. That's different from having a hard magic system that seems like soft in the beggining, but as the reader goes through the book it learns more about the magic and it reveals it hard. That's not a blend, that's just learning curve. And of course you probably want to keep some percentage of unknown, to either give you space to explore in possible future stories, or to keep it looking like magic, not just a weird law of physic.
Yeah I agree as well right from the get go he started contradicting himself and provided old books are reference for a hard magic system while starting Mistborn as the catalyst for it... The topic is good, but the title and minor contradictions messed everything up.
Yeah I was waiting for him to give examples of industry trends but all of the books/series he talks about came out before mistborn which was his primary example of hard magic. Maybe romantasy leans towards soft magic but that is a sub genre thing and might not reflect fantasy as a whole.
@@LoreGeist it'll last as long as good writers can take it Plus, you can always just have both. A lot of super popular animated shows (that I have watched recently and am therefore thinking more of) do! Dandadan has many solidly defined abilities (telekinetic hands, getting super strong at the cost of extreme bodily fatigue) but some of the greater entities and spirits baffle comprehension with how they can warp reality. The fear-powered devils of Chainsawman are similar. Denji himself just sprouts chainsaws and regenerates by drinking blood. But then you run into a primal fear, like the darkness devil, and *oooooh boy*! Finally, Arcane. Hex tech weapons (hard, literally solid magic) vs the very clearly alive and possibly aware primal rune.
Thank god, im tired of fantasy storys with magic sistems that look like a videogame character skill tree(yes, am looking at you, sanderson) Mistery is one of the fundaments of magic in fantasy and adding too much rules to a magic sistem kills that fantasy.
Softer magic is better when you want mysterious figures and focus on other parts of the story like lotr. Gandalfs magic was never focused on because it was just there. But hard magic is better when you have a clear vision on how it works and it connects to the story as a whole. Like mistaken a clear vision was there and it directly correlated to the end.
In a hybrid story, you're never rooting for the person with soft magic to win the day. Humans are technical and have technical problems. I don't wanna read five books for you to win because you believed with all your heart this time!? I want my ultimate hero to be smart, or a good planner, crafty or observant, harder working, i'll even settle for lucky, because atleast i can relate to it.
@taurianferguson fair enough but you don't need to focus on the magic to be technical. You could focus on swordplay or some other skill. Perhaps the mystery of who killed a man or how a countrys politics works. I don't think your wrong. As I don't like that all the time but I do think in that sometimes you don't need to go into the magic all the time.
@@LupusLore-l5c What you're asking for is kinda like a space opera where it's the same human stories but told against a futuristic backdrop. I want that sometimes too, but it kinda defeats the point of magical fantasy if the problems are solved with better monetary policy.
@@taurianferguson XD fair point but that would be an interesting story. Like DND magic needs components and that would involve money politics on a grand scale especially if magic was hyper destructive
Mistborn is a technothriller. It requires hard rules and their understanding to work. Introducing hard magic into a romance story, however, would be a ridiculous choice - it does nothing to enhance the important story, and hinders the connection between love and forces of nature. And this is what we're usually getting in the oversaturation corner.
I think the big problem people have and the point they miss with magic is that it's very much like people. People are often unpredictable and wild. Having hidden depths and strange aspects we do not get. Magic I think is a reflection like that. Hence why it always feels off when people try to reduce magic into a system or force that can be mechanized and commodified, all born from this weird need for control and predictability. Magic tends to be shown as alive and with depths and mystery, just like a person. Always with a bit of change and wonder.
In my world, fey magic is soft, mysterious, and powerful. My world's human magic is limited, subtle, and erratic. A human spell doesn't guarantee a nearly instant healing, it cuts healing time and reduces risk of complications. "Don't look" spells aren't for invisibility, but most folks won't notice your presence if you keep quiet. It's a hard magic sytem with varying results depending on factors like the magician's training, intent, ability to concentrate, physical well-being, and more. It's hard magic, but an art more than science.
There has to be an element of unpredictability in even a hard system. Look at the Book of Five Magics. The laws of magic were clear and well-known, but none of the schools of magic was without a flaw and the interaction between different arts was unpredictable.
The shift is the same reason things always shift: something becomes popular, everyone and their mother does it (many a hollow soulless copy), and it makes people start becoming tired of it. Especially the people perpetually chasing a sense of novelty.
Issue with soft magic is the everpresent danger of pulling solutions out of one's rear, especially to the point of readers going "wait...could he do that?" It's why I think it a lot more when soft magic is made "hard" (chortle chortle) by making it the domain of human-seeming but ultimately inhuman things (deities/faustian devils etc). That way, you have the character's intent be clear while the mechanics remain as nebulous (and the consequences of such magic...potentially unintended)
This is the big problem with soft magic for sure. That’s why I wanted to discuss in the video a few techniques to avoid the reading feeling like this about it. But I agree that it takes work to make your soft system not feel deus-ex-machine-ey and lazy
Why not introduce a magic system that has strict rules, but they're yet not well understood by the inhabitants of the world? The author abides to the rules, but the characters do not know how to explain what happened and how to duplicate it.
I would like to see a show where magic starts off soft but as the story progresses it becomes more hard as the MC finds and learns the rules and limits that magic can do.
It kinda goes with the way people discover science and natural phenomena in the real world. It could act as a good foil for exploring science as a theme
My favorite magic system has to be all the different types of magic present in Malazan (especially "standard" Warren-magic). It is "soft" in the sense that depending on who we are talking about and what the situation is, magic can do almost anything. Communicate with Gods in your sleep? Check. Travel great distances in a single day? Check. Summon demons? Sure. Imprison beings in a parallel dimension? Yup. Reincarnation? Firestorms with the power of nuclear bombs? Flying fortresses the size of mountains? Yes, yes, and yes. However, while the magic might seen arbitrary at first, it is anything but. There are rules to the magic, even if they are not well understood and can be bent. The aspect of magic at play for example dictates what the practitioner can do and how well. Shadow for example is great for tricking people. Illusions and mind games. Ice, while obviously being able to literally freeze stuff, can also be used to freeze something in time, preserving whatever it covers in centuries long stasis. Etc. What is additionally great with the magic in Malazan is, that most PoV characters are not magic users and if they are, they are often on the lower end of the power scale. A lot of PoV characters are just average soldiers, who know just enough about magic to know when to keep their heads down. Average citizens have even less of a clue and some even think of magic as mysterious or even made-up, because it does not affect their lives in any way. We never enter the heads of the few characters who really understand magic at a comprehensive level (which is a good choice by Erikson, because they are very inhuman godlike beings or straight up gods). This works really well, since the style of the series in general is one that feels like uncovering and connecting the dots. Keeping magic somewhat mysterious works great with the way the story is told. In contrast the Cradle series also has a fantastic hard magic system, which works equally well its purpose of telling a power-scaling shounen-anime like story. tldr: You magic system needs to fit the story you want to tell.
In Malazan, not only are there different kinds of magic (shadow, ice, whatever) there are also DIFFERENT KINDS OF MAGIC, whole different styles or approaches to power that don't really understand each other and whose capabilities and limitations and flavours are significantly different. So arguably, the "warren magic" that most human wizards seem to use feels to the reader like it would be a hard magic system if the reader knew enough about it to get the rules. But some of the other stuff feels, even to those human wizards let alone the reader, like "soft" magic that they don't understand and that may be just fundamentally mysterious. It's really cool.
I would like to say I use both, hard magic for the protagonists because they know and the reader sees their limitations on what they can or can’t do, on the other hand the antagonists remain a mystery, little by little the protagonists learn what type of opponent they are facing. It allows for tense moments where the squad can’t simply rush separately for a 1 v 1 because that foe may be the counter to your ability. What you think?
Using both is great, specially if you’re writing a longer series and gets time/page real state to explore both types of magic with enough time. If it’s a shorter story it may be tricky to find room to explore all your magic aspects properly
@ yeah my story is a long journey so it allows me to freely abuse the soft magic while giving satisfaction of strategic decision making with the protagonists hard magic
I guess you could also think of it like, do you WANT to understand the magic, or do you want to keep it mysterious? For those who want to be wizards/witches, and always play those kinds of characters in video games and/or D&D, you want to be in on how the magic works, you want to know all the hidden knowledge, the arcane secrets, the under-the-hood knowledge of how the magic works. These kinds of people are naturally drawn to hard magic systems. If you don't care about all of that, and only care about how the magic makes you feel, then soft magic systems would naturally appeal to you more.
I find it has to be a balance of the two , if its to fantastical it's to lazy, to hard it gets to complex, which is hard to do as it tends to start to lean to one side or the other to far some times ,
I like "unsolved" hard magic. Stories where magic has rules but characters are yet to understand or discover how it works. Like you said is kind like a blend between the two. I like magic to have consequences and limitations, but I don't necessarily want it to feel like it is a D&D session at play. I also enjoy when the rules and consequences are very bizarre and weird, it makes for great plot points of characters using magic in the "wrong" way.
Yeah, the “monkey paw” kinda stories are fun with a magic twist. I also dislike when the magic system feels like D&D / video game and the characters talk about it in the most mechanical and unrealistic terms. Takes me right out of the story.
I think that a combination of the two approaches is best. Even Sanderson has examples of "soft magic" within the cosmere but even if you are intimately familiar with his works, you start to realize that what you thought you knew about the systems was actually scratching the surface of something much deeper.
@LoreGeist Sure; you have Surges and then you have Cultivation's boons/curses. That said, if we go beyond this and delve into the harder systems like Allomancy and Awakening, you will start to realize that all of the powers are connected and interact in mysterious ways. And even beyond that, they all have a "Spiritual" component that currently remains completely mysterious.
I'm writing an ongoing online series titled Braided Power. Initially, I employed a hard magic system, but as I approach the conclusion of season one, I am transitioning to a softer magic system. I am concerned that this shift might confuse my readers. Could anyone offer some advice?
A lot of the stories I'm working on exist in the same world, many generations apart and on different parts of the world. The magic ebbs and flows so one book is going to have people using magic as casually as we use technology (someone who can use light magic makes a microwave while messing around) and others where it's almost dead. There's an evolution of magic as time goes on and so I don't contradict myself from one story to the next, I'm trying to keep the magic system softer in nature. But one of my characters is really good at healing magic and works at a hospital. And that got me thinking, "in a world of healing magic and potions, (same story with the magic microwave) why would anyone need to practice medicine?" I had to give specifically that area of magic "hard magic" rules because I can't stop over thinking it.
Once you go in depth into the world of tolkien you start to see an inkling of hard magic that was just never explored. From the singing that creates the world to the shaping and corruption of beings, especially in the crafting of the rings which was a teachable system.
There is of course the possibility to use both at the same time. Let's say that on one side you have alchemy or magic that has hard rules and is predictable. On the other side you could have prayers to deities. The deities could answer the prayer in ways their priest did not ask for, but the end result is better. Like the hero is wounded and priest prays for the hero to be healed. The deity grants the healing, but not completely or too slow for the hero to participate in the next battle where the enemy had a trap prepared where the hero would have died. Done wrong this can come over like a deus ex machina, but done right? There is a lot of potential. This wouldn't be like in Dungeons & Dragons where it's a sure thing that a prayer would be answered. We know the mess Troi was because of the gods. You could have priests of the same deity on both sides of a conflict and the deity answers both their prayers.
I like both, but I prefer creamy hard magic systems, which are simple to understand with basic rules. Soft magic is also good for horror novels to make the atmosphere more scary and mysterious.
Same argument stands for hard and soft scifi... the problem is we often forget the point of the entire world building project is to tell a story, be it sci fi, or fantasy, or anywhere in between (i myself am guilty of such abomination as a scifi fantasy... you just can't not love the half breed two headed monster you create when you have one of those) Always keep this in mind people, do what makes your story go, and remember, the magic is in the balance (pun intended 😉) magic is magic, if it's science then it's just tech, some sense should be possible to make, but you just don't have to explain everything... For example, you have a hero who has to result to magic left and right and centre only to survive a more powerful magic thrown at him by the enemy, you get to see how a lifetime of preparations have made your hero able to cast those spells, and perhaps each tricks needs it's own runes and chants and ingredients, but then you will see people defeating that said more powerful enemy magic, at much greater costs, giving up their lives or limbs or in pain or even dignity... and then you can only imagine the immensity of the cost the end game magic in the plot going to toll at the heroes and the world, foreshadowing and all that jazz... I dare to say, if there's a cost to your magic, it's already as hard as you would ever need it... leave the rest of your magic to stay... magical...
Yeah, you’re basically talking about power scaling / power creep which is also important. If there’s no sense of progressive danger with the magic, it’s hard to assess how a random threat has less power than the main villain / big boss, other than the author saying the villain is “stronger”.
@@LoreGeistthis is why i liked shikamaru vs temari in naruto. Temari is clearly stronger but she technically lost because she was outsmarted. I feel like power creep can be slowed, halted or even reversed by introducing characters that can outsmart and defeat their opponents despite their opponents being stronger. In naruto shipuuden and boruto, the characters arent really outsmarting each other anymore. Most fights are just "my energy blast vs your healing/attack" and it makes it boring
@@jismeraiverhoeven yeah, shikamaru’s fights were usually so great because of this. Limited power but creative problem solving. It’s a shame Naruto went off the rails with the power creep later
Soft magic works best when you aren't writing stories about magic users. Though hard magic sucks all the fun of that for me too, this is why I prefer a layered magic system with a base of soft magic, where harder (though preferably not to the point of a hard science) magic is employed by the magic user. Star Wars used to do this pretty well, not so much anymore. Magic should always be more art than science.
I don't believe in the distinction between soft magic and hard magic. I feel like it's coming from a wrong understanding of science applied to fiction, where it claims to make a "scientific" explanation of how the magic works, when even science as we do it in our world is really just "as far as we can explain...". This often means that there's not only "this is how magic works" inside the story, but also word of god that yes, this is actually what happens on a fundamental level in the world's physics. And that, fundamentally, makes magic lose its sense of wonder. But when you look again at the science of our world, and how ideas evolved, they are mostly "if...then" observations that are explained with an idea of how things we cannot see are working under the hood, but that's more often than not an educated guess, and it's replaced by the next, better guess. This is often missing from hard magic systems, it's just "this is how it works and has always worked", it's not an evolving body of ideas, it's not a representation of the culture it stems from, it has no regard for class or intelligence of the people, etc. It just works. So as soon as there is magic in a world, people will try to explain it. Some explanations will be better than others, but most likely all of them will be flawed. When compared to our history, are we in a more animistic phase of human history, where people might understand magic as talking to the spirits inside objects, or would it be more like our modern world, where magic is explained with forces and particles? In both cases, the wizard can make the rock float, just his understanding of the situation might be different. The thing that makes "hard" magic so "boring" is that the magic is treated like we treat technology today, ubiquitous, blase, matter of fact. If the characters don't express any sense of wonder over the magic in the world, why should I as a reader feel that? And if the magic is part of the world's everyday life, that is absolutely valid. It doesn't mean ALL magic is like that as well, it can easily be that you have folk magic that people use in their everyday life, but at the same time there are far greater magical powers out there, that only a rare few can wield. When looking at Avatar, I have a hard time categorizing it as hard magic in any sense of the way. People know "if I move in this way, I can manipulate the elements", but even that isn't true for everyone, just some people. Then they don't study the bending like science, it's a lot more philosophy, martial arts, even copying animals in a lot of cases. Add to that things like the moon spirits and the Avatar himself, and you'll see that nothing is really explained as hard as it might look at first.
I Am also definitely an author who tries to blend the two types of magic. It's definitely a challenging way to write, but it has helped me make a richer world where action scenes feel like exciting puzzles, while softer spells are driven in emotional moments.
I doubt they’re dead. Plenty of people still like magic systems that have rules and limits. Personally, I think we might want to think about giving some more attention to medium Magic systems for a while
Yeah! Dead is an exaggeration of course since this sort of thing is always cyclical. But out of the 20 most popular fantasy books in 2024, only one had a clear hard magic system (Sanderson).
@LoreGeist I think the main “issue” is that the more limitations there are, the harder it is for someone to insert an OC (themself) into that world as a completely OP God-tier badass, which is what everyone does at some point, admittedly or not. 😆 So yeah, it’s all in the cycle as you said.
Both have their strengths. I tend to read manga, manhua, manhwa and their respective webnovels, and I really appreciate how hybrid magic systems allow for more depth and intrigue without the reader feeling like the character doing things it shouldn't be able to. It allows for layers of complexity hidden in simplistic design
One could make the argument that the difference may come down to a matter of perspective. Soft magic works tend to be told from the POV of someone who does not have magic (most characters in a Song of Ice and Fire) or someone who has an incomplete knowledge of it (Harry Potter). The limits of these magic systems may not be fully explained, but as the character learns more about those limits so do we. For my own work, two of the three drafts I'm working on lean more into hard magic than soft. In one it is simply the matter that most magic comes from materials with limited capabilities. In the other, a subset of characters have very defined abilities inherent to their subgroups. My third draft leans towards soft magic, but it is told from the POV of someone who isn't exactly knowledgeable about magic and that story focuses more on creatures than casters.
been talking about this with friends for so long! thank you for introducing me to the terms hard magic and soft magic. it's gotten so prevalent, and it's fun every once in a while, but i want my soft magic! only real problem i've had isekai is the "voice of god" systems and the inevitable "it's just like a video game!" trope. i want my lodoss magic back! lose the skill points! it adds nothing important.
Yeah, to me it breaks immersion when we’re literally informed about how many mana points someone use to cast a spell or something, the author may know about this but it should be conveyed in a more organic way
Then we have Frieren. It's definitely a hard magic system as in it feels like it has rules and limits, but it still passes a sense of wonder and mistery for some reason
@@ayoncruz as long as i know frieren magic sistem is considered soft magic, you can do anything as long as you understand what are you doing and how works the world.
My personal favorite is a medium magic system, halfway between hard and soft. I like when magic has some guidelines and rules, but there is still a ton of wiggle room.
There will always be those who aren't satisfied with soft magic, because everything needs to be studied and picked apart. Even then, as these hard magic systems inevitably prove, you can't explain everything satisfactorily and you eventually have to break the system or start to admit that there's things you just can't explain about the magic.
I don't write by what is "In" i write by what i like. I like to have both. A harder, well explained magic system that also has softer elements that are not as explained. That way Wizards can get stymied when they run into magic they don't understand, and it will reflect their perspective whether they get vexed or fascinated.
I’ve always preferred softer magic systems, the idea of there being a mystery to it and those who use it feel special or that magic is something borrowed and not commanded.
On Hard vs Soft you could it where things expand as in a Hard system not everything is known. Like in Avatar when Toph develops Metal Bending. Or how Blood Bending is an extension of water bending. Using the magic in uncommon ways. Also on Hard not knowing everything you could have a system that the people think is hard but actually soft due to people in the world misunderstanding it. This is common in our own history people use to think everything revolved around the Earth and had to come up with convoluted ways to explain the motion of the planets. Or how it feels like modern people like to make fun of ancient theories like everything being made of the 4 elements is seen as silly. However I look at it as ancient people with no concept of atomic theory trying to explain the 4 states of matter, Earth/Solid, Water/Liquid, Air/Gas, and Fire/Plasma. With out a concept of atoms they wouldn't understand phase shifts in atomic bonds that shift them into different states. A lot of scientific theories are seen as "good enough" to the point we still even use some that we know to be incorrect such as Newton's formulas on motion and force. Einstein's Special Relativity is far more accurate but unless you are dealing with very far distances and/or high speeds than it's not worth all the extra effort and so we still use Newton's formulas because they are close enough in everyday use that it doesn't matter. It's a bit like rounding up/down when doing a math problem as it's not truly the correct answer but it's close enough. As such I think it would be kinda cool to have a hard magic system where the world gets the rug pulled out from under it as what they thought they knew was just the surface and good enough for their day to day usage but perhaps has some unintended consequences or gets used in unforeseen ways by the antagonist.
This idea of always grounding people’s understanding of magic to how our society understood science throughout the ages is really cool because it’s a good proxy on how humanity would handle magic if it existed. Both tackle understanding truths about the world and how we behave knowing those truths. It’s always a good anchor for magic. Never thought about this parallel between the four elements and the four states of matter
I get the preferences with both hard and soft magic. With my story im personnally trying to go with hard magic because i love that one so much. I love magic that has limits, drawbacks, strengths and weakness that are deeply understood not juat by the reader but the world itself. Because pike you said its so much moee satisfying when they so somwthing unique with it in that scenario. So thats what im trying. Goal is to sort of tie magic to their lifeforce. This is because magic is so entwined in the universe and the people that they never lived without it. So if you push yourself to exert all your magic potential without rest you could pass out or wven die from exhaustion because its as if your bled out or ran out of breathe. Its apart of life. Reason some if not most just pass out though is because like irl your body will try to self preserve itself so itll just knock you out so you cant die due to exhausting all your magic.
Hard magic should have always been called “fantasy science” “Unknowable”, “impenetrable by reason”was always an important property of magic and hard magic directly contradicts that.
I have a magic system that can fluctuate between hard and soft states depending on the medium of the magic, the more attunement one has over their magical domain, the more consistent and rational that magic becomes. Magic is ultimately a metaphor though, and if it is used without the wisdom to understand its philosophical foundations, then the spell will definitely go wild and probably recoil, or manifest as a curse.
The problem of hard magic systems is: no one is keeping tabs on the limitations. Like how many mana points has the character left or if they can channel their magic juice though the lymphatic system instead of the bloodstream. Shadow of the Conqueror by Shad, beside being a uninspired copy of The Stormlight Archives (with less fun and more rapes) just frauds the reader at the end by saying "I can channel my mana now in a very specific ability and not just my muscles and my sensory organs like everyone in this universe does!" I prefer the much fairer approach of Matt Dinniman in his Dungeon Crawler Carl series where a unexpected synergy of spells is used both to aid and disadvantage the protagonists in different times and the opponents are smart enough to figure out some of their own.
It would be interesting to have a world where common mage had a hard magic system but there was layer of higher being- gods or ancients or something- that had very powerful soft magic system.
I've enjoyed hard magic systems--even written them in my main series--but I'm very much on board with the turn toward softer magic. Watching Opera North's production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Nibelung's Ring, aka The Ring Cycle), I was greatly inspired by the mythic, numinous approach to magic, and I hope to see more fantasy series going in that direction.
Personally I like when Hard Magic is the base story while Soft Magic running in the background. Like in Harry Potter universe there are also Ancient Magics that even modern wizard didn’t understand. Or in Trails Series they create device for people to use magic-like power but still has Real Magic as the legend and mythology. (And super advance version of Hard Magic too. So it like has 3 version of magic in that game series)
I sort of feel like whether or not a magic system is 'hard' or 'soft' basically boils down to how well it is understood. Just because we don't know what the rules are doesn't necessarily mean there aren't any. I think any good author should know the limitations of the magic system in their story, even if we as the readers are left in the dark.
I lean more towards hard but unlimited or hybrid systems; maybe these are the same thing, but let me try to explain. For me, a hard system is good because you know what you can and can't do and thus know exactly what you have to work with so as to overcome challenges; but at the same time, within the bounds of those rules, there should be no limits to what a person can achieve. A fire bender may never be able to magic water, but he should be able to cause or prevent a volcano's eruption; a water bender can't magic fire, but he should be able to command the tide. This offers a clear chance for progression and possible opportunities to break the limits such a system might impose upon its users. On the other hand, creating hybrid systems where people think they know the rules only to discover that said rules are closer to suggestions or are actually socially/legally-imposed limitations offers endless possibilities for conflict and development. When I brainstorm new ideas, I often find myself creating multiple systems per setting (usually no more than three), each of which fall in different places along the scale or one big system that has multiple facets to it and each facet falls somewhere along a morality scale rather than a hard-soft scale. For example, an idea I've been playing with recently possesses a hard "magic" system in the form of alchemy and herbology and a soft system in the form of miracles and sorcery. The thing here is that alchemy and herbology are not magic, but a mix of institutionalized science and traditional folk medicine, respectively; only charlatans claim these are magical practices and only those too ignorant to know otherwise would believe such claims. On the other hand, the power to work miracles is given only to the pious and morally righteous, so that they might do good works in the world; should a miracle worker have a crisis of faith or fail to remain righteous--should they stop being a good person in service to a good cause--or if they simply refuse to use their gifts, the gifts can and will be taken away. Sorcery is a corrupting, evil force that tempts people to give into their curiosity, vices, and greed, making greater sacrifices of themselves and others along the way until they at last commit the ultimate sacrilege and become true sorcerers, damnation incarnate. What makes this a hybrid system is the fact that it's actually possible to mix and match the sciences with either, but not both, of the magics and create even more powerful forces to work with.
You have put the Stormlight Archive as an example of something in between, as well as the shards since they are entities in which their most typical powers of a soft magic are not defined. I believe otherwise, it is true that stories may seem like this because the reader has little knowledge of the magic system, as you read you discover those rules and see that even the shards have perfectly defined that things can or cannot do and what is the scope of these. In the same way that Undmade are examples of how sinister mitilogical entities fit perfectly into a hard magic system.
Partially agree. There could be more mystery, but one just has to balance and blend mystery with the rules. Logical but weird and unpredictable outcomes can also feel mysterious such as the teleportation science in Half-life. Sci Fi I believe is not only about being grounded in-world consistent rules, we see some works have the appearance of sci fi but if the actual underlying real world science is shows a poor grasp despite the fiction being internally consistent, then its also debatable how sci fi that work is. Whereas fantasy is more than its vibe of myth and folklore, but also caricature. Technically Star Wars would be more of a space fantasy for example wheras The Expanse would be more Sci Fi.
I usually create a magic system with hard rules, but the people of the world I create don't necessarily understand it's rules/limitations/possibilities.
Plot holes and deus ex machina are not problems related to the magic system, they are narrative problems, and both systems aren't more or less susceptible to them. For example, in Mistborn important plot points tend to be solved by Vin figuring something out about the system that was established previously to not work like that (you can't pierce copper clouds, you can't move metals attached to flesh), especially at the end of book 1 where mist twirling around mistborns come into play, and it ended up being something VERY convenient to solve the final conflict, because the twirling could have literally meant anything, but then the story excuses itself under you simply not knowing how the system fully worked yet so it's fine if new rules get added. So at the end of the day hard magic doesn't really add any more stakes if it can change its own established rules whenever it wants, if you can always just keep the full rules unexplored until they are needed. Sure, 'foreshadowing' and whatever, but foreshadowing is easy to write in any story, that's what revision is for. I could have Gandalf throw a giant fireball into the battlefield and be like "umm that was foreshadowed by him saying he's the servant of the Secret Fire, and the carrier of the Flame of Anor", you can add a little more 'foreshadowing' if you want by adding small scenes of him creating small campfires or whatever, but that wouldn't make the giant fireball scene any less convenient when used.
The main purpose of "hard" systems seems to be to generate opportunities for the hero to heroically get around the rules. John Clute called these get-arounds "quibbles" and they have a long history going back into folklore and myth, before anyone thought of defining "systems". The fantasy of avoiding the daily grind is a powerful one.
Another thing people tend not to notice about the hard magic system is how it is used to push for secularism and the elimination of all things with a spiritual aspect. For example, look at the Marvel movies where they try to explain away the Gods' power as advanced tech, which makes no sense with characters like Loki and Hella. Not to mention Dr. Strange's magic is just advanced math etc. Avatar the Last Airbender was heavily spiritual but the Kora series undermined that aspect. Same for Star Wars "The Force" when they introduced methacholine. Vamps, weres, and zombies are viruses, shrooms, and chemical lab accidents. They are no longer pushed as curses or magic
It seems like the primary difference between hard and soft magic is how well explained it is, but in principle, all magic is "sufficiently explainable" if the author just bothered to do that. A thing I would like to point out regarding this discussion, is that the application of "magic" is extremely loose, particularly as it relates to Sanderson. Magic is a general system that allows devising particular ways to do particular things. Most of what passes for "magic" systems in Sanderson's work is not magic, but rather a collection of supernatural abilities (with supernatural here just being a gloss for anything that doesn't work according to real world physics. Magic is supernatural, but not everything supernatural is magic.). That being said, I don't think Sanderson actually every uses magic systems, nor knows what they are.
The difference between “soft” and “hard” magic stems from seeing magic as conscious or unconscious. Prehistoric people thought of magic as self-aware, either as a single conscious magic force, or a lot of little magic spirits, each with its own home and name. Why are “magic words” needed to cast spells in so many cultures around the world? Because you literally have to talk to the magic spirits or forces to ask them to do what you want. You have to call them, often by name, say exactly what it is you need from them, and bribe, cajole or threaten them into doing it. You may even need to give them a pep talk to convince them they can do what you’re demanding. Spell components, in turn, are often offerings to the spirit in exchange for the boon you want. Conscious magic strongly tends to be soft magic, because conscious beings are unpredictable. They may be in a good mood or bad, like or dislike the person talking to them, want or not want the gift you offer or the service you promise, be busy or bored, even be wide awake or asleep. So you can never be sure just what will happen when you call on conscious magical beings. Over time, people began to see parts of the world as unconscious and mechanical. The world was divided between the “natural,” which was unconscious and predictable, and the “supernatural,” which was still conscious and thus harder to control. Magic, in turn, split between rituals and formulas which were still intended to appeal to conscious beings and those that merely manipulated or analyzed the unconscious, natural world - astrology, for example, where the predictable and unconscious movements of stars and planets produced what were thought to be predestined, immutable results on Earth. This unconscious magic is “hard” magic, and if confirmed by experiment, it tends to shade into science. Ultimately, we arrived at the Newtonian idea that treats the whole universe as mechanical and predictable, leaving no supernatural realm and thus no room for magic at all, even raising the frightening possibility that our own consciousness and freedom of choice may be an illusion. Of course, there can be middle grounds between these extremes. Over time, humans develop laws, customs, and policies to make their dealings with each other safer and more predictable. Humans and magical spirits might well do the same; over a thousand years, calling on a spirit to do your bidding may become less like a white trapper and a Native American hunter nervously negotiating a furs-for-guns deal, each with a hand on their weapon, and more like a share sale on the New York Stock Exchange, done with total confidence at breakneck speed. In turn, quantum mechanics and chaos theory both suggest some inextricable randomness to the physical world, which may be reflected even in hard magic. Still, other factors being equal, the more conscious magical forces are, the softer the magic system will be, and vice versa.
This is really interesting. Just to add to the quantum mechanics point you raised. At some point the human brain is physically incapable to process and understand natural phenomena when science progresses (quantum physics as it advances, 4th and 5th dimensions), etc. Which means science eventually circles back to being inexplicable and awe-inspiring.
It's simple to me, I think that sometimes the writer feels obligated to explain their magic. Once more writers understand that they can get away with not explaining their magic too much, then I feel the problems begin to go away. For example, I can make a "hard" system with rules and consequences but I don't explain the why or point out all the nuances. If my young wizard foolishly casts 10 spells in quick succession instead of his usual 6 then he will die from a brain hemorrhage. I believe if I convey consequences without spoiling the mystery, then I personally believe hard systems can work.
The problem with hard magic is that as sanderson says hard magic lets you solve problems with magic. But the point of all fiction is that problems are human problems with human solutions. Not magic solutions.
The thing about hard magic systems is that in a sense, they're just science fiction with new add-on physics (arguably SF where psionics are important is fantasy with spaceships, but I digress). But I don't think that means hard magic systems are, ever will be, or should be dead. I LIKE science fiction, and there's NOTHING WRONG with extending it to add extra physics and technology to explore and setting it somewhere that tech from the normal physics is low, thus letting the extra, alternate physics shine. But I like fantasy too. So I wouldn't want hard magic systems to really take over, because I do want to keep on having fantasy to read. I don't want there to stop being room for the likes of Patricia McKillip or Charles de Lint.
I would disagree with two magic system classification as soft to hard There are indeed two types of magic in fantasy one been methodological and the other been phenomenological In the first interpretation you could say that magic ranges from soft to hard: LotR -> HP -> Cosmere But this classification imo misses the point of the intent of the magic in the story. You could say that both HP and Cosmere has underlying principles on how magic works but the same is not true for LotR LotR | HP(soft) -> Cosmere(hard) One type of magic veers, at varying degrees, to what we know and the other embraces/explores the unknown The difference between a soft and a phenomenological magic might appear to be subtle at a first glance but once you look at it the difference is noticeable Just my 2 cents
How I would go about it is this: Whose perspective is the story being told from? Is it a wizard who has strudied magic for years? Or someone else who can be expected to have deep indepth knowledge of magic? In that case, hard magic makes sense. Otherwise, all the audience learns is what the PoV character learns, which may me as little as "Just don't worry about the magic and let me handle it" said by the wizard.
Lotr soft magic (from gandalf, sauron glaurung in the silmarillon, etc) has to do with how theology understands spiritual beings like angels/demons and their will in contrast to mortals. It is about imposing their will.
Avatar is definitely a hybrid system. There are _some_ rules we understand well... But there are also so many unknowns and variables. In Avatar it is puy on display how a lot of limitations of the system come from tradition and how it is the people who actively choose to learn the untraditional that truly excel and find new and unique applications of their element's magic. Also, in games, I feel that nothing is worse than letting hard and soft magic coexist. It makes the player ask questions like "how come _they_ can do this but _I_ cannot? If you make the player follow a set of rules, these rules should apply to the rest of the characters, too... That doesn't mean others can't be more powerful. It just means that that power has to make sense. As a good example: in the Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Arantir does casually display feats of power that are only available to the player character at the moments when they give their all. But he never feels like he's "breaking the rules". There are undead and demon summonings, but these, in turn, are never done haphazardly in combat. You get a sense that these are rituals that are done specifically to achieve that greater level of power - and it is never implied that such things are beyond the player character's ability - he just isn't ever put into a setting where that would be viable throughout the game.
Soft magic is easier to work with because it doesn't have the hard rules. Hard magic is great for those who like to delve into the rules and imagine the possibilities. Soft magic is great because you can follow it like guidelines but also do extra stuff. Maybe break the rules a little, but you didn't write hard rules so you aren't technically breaking them. I think the best example is Harry Potter's patronus charm. In book three it was very advanced magic, in book 5 it was something anyone could produce when not under duress by a dementor, in book 6 it could now send messages, in book 7 it was used to make an announcement and carry a verbal message. Why? What part of repelling a dementor, the purpose of the charm, includes sending a message? In reality, it was a prevalent spell that was well known to the audience, so instead of introducing something new tacking it onto something that exists is just simpler.
I've always enjoyed mysterious magic more than hard systems. That's why mages exist, to be the ones that study and develop it. But I also enjoy when magic is a character itself in a sense.
I will always prefer Hard Magic Systems, personally… Buuuut they can easily become convoluted and needlessly complex and that is probably where they lose people.. and Technically.. even soft magic systems still have rules.. at least they should, but they are only known to the writer, like how the spice in dune works and the Force in star wars. I like the magic system of avatar because there is a set of simple rules, so there are limits and/or consequences. My big issue with soft magic systems is the lack of any answers… I don’t need to know everything about a magic system but id like to know enough that it makes SOME degree of sense. I hate that soft magic systems, IMO, are more likely to find lazy writing and cop-outs… the writer has written a main character into a corner and instead of rewriting that particular part to be BETTER they come up with lazy get out of jail free powers that they pull out of their ass and then sometimes that ability is never even seen or heard being used again. Heres an idea people… Why cant we stop labeling magic with soft or hard… that’s overly simplistic, why not just make your own system without those two in mind and come up with what YOU want. Creators should be more concerned with what they want to create instead of what everybody else is making/writing. I wish people had the GUTS to fail.. At least try and be original >
Personally Im a fan of a soft magic with a hard magic base. where the basic rules are explained and can be understood. but that the way you can combine and use these basic rules can infinitely combined and twisted and loophole making the magic mysterious and unknowable. Like how to write and caste a spell are hard but as long as you do the work and set up, anything kind of spell can be made. Even something tht would break the world if you achieve it.
Sanderson effect on the next generation of authors has just begun. (especially given that Mistborn, in 2024, is at an all time peak in popularity) Personally I expect to start seeing alot more hard magic from new/young authors, before the genre settles into a healthy mix of the two.
See, I think I like an internal hard magic system accessible in glossaries but not explained in the story. People find the mystery but it is grounded with it's own rule set
LoTR’s soft magic was rooted in Christian influence, where magic is limited to those of either divine or demonic influence. Hard magic is more in line with pagan/witchcraft, like we see in Harry Potter.
I was inspired by the talks of Neil Degras Tyson and his love of science and the way he talks about the recent discovers found is what inspired me to put secrets, themes, and plotlines behind the magic system system
I don't know if I agree with your categorizations at all. I will just say it like this, in a novel which is trying to focus on the party at large the reader simply doesn't need to know the mechanics of the magic that the 1 wizard in the party is using. It's enough for the reader to know that's a mage and for some reason he/she can do magic. That is your Gandalf type magic, I would still say his magic has a science behind it but we the reader aren't privy to it and there is no need for us to know it since the story isn't about the wizards of Middle Earth but about the Ring of Power so any mage characters are more backdrops rather than the subject matter itself. Harry Potter on the other hand, is an entire story where wizardry and witchcraft is the focus of the entire world building and plot so ofcourse breaking everything down to a science to the point we even need to learn how the wands work and what different type of mythical creature parts were infused with said wands. So I don't think there is a "hard and soft" magic system, I think it just depends on whether the author wants to write a story centered around magicians or not to determine whether said author should completely break down their magic system to a science or just iterate that there are magic users in the story, and they are powerful and leave the rest to the imagination of the audience.
I feel like the push for hard magic is often just so internet pedant critics can have another tool to nitpick how the series is unrealistic because "He was carrying that iron, so it must have been less than 10 kilograms, but we know that in order to get a semicircular 10 meter fire burst you need 12 kilograms of iron. And then he used a paralysis spell? Thats not possible from elemental manipulation. So many plot holes, why doesn't he just fly to the moon next"
I've read two recent series NOT by Sanderson. The First was Arcane Ascension by Andrew Rowe. It was a hard magic system with rules and restrictions about how magic worked and who could wield it. And the magic system was good and interesting. It was the plot that eventually turned me off, with more progressive elements becoming dominant. The Second was the Riyaria Revelations which had a soft magic system where magic is an art and can't be taught, only developed. But the characters and plots were better and I ended up buying those. So it's not about the magic systems, it's about how that fits in the story and if that story is good.
Personally speaking, I prefer hard magic systems. I like to make sense of the world(s) around me, and unexplained mysteries and ambiguities feel unsatisfying to me. The worst extremes of soft magic systems, at least in my opinion, are those found in horror stories, where the lack of rules and the unpredictability is by intent, to make things more frightening. Fear of the unknown / unknowable, etc. I didn't particularly care about the magic in a Song of Ice and Fire. It was there, it disrupted human plots, that's it. The only thing I found interesting about it was how magic had completely vanished, to the point where people took it for mere myth, and suddenly it's coming back. A bit like the Shadowrun backstory, with magic suddenly re-emerging in 2012, together with a new age on some old Mayan calender. Magic in Tolkien is basically irrelevant, if you ask me. What made Gandalf powerful were his age, experience and skills. Lighting the occasional pipe with magical fire was window dressing. Sure, prophesies and sometimes even miracles happen, but that's it, they happen and nothing more. Don't get me wrong, there can also be too much focus on magical systems and rules. The Black Prism series by Brent Weeks is a great example of a meticulously laid out magical system placed over a world full of inconsistencies and implausible characters. It's been years since I read it, but between unsympathetic main characters making one questionable decision after another and flaws in the lore (how the F would an extremely poor kid in a pre-industrial society end up obese?!), at some point I just put it away and never finished the whole mess. *** One thing, though: The best Story about magic published in the last few years, without a doubt, is the manga/anime Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. It came out just about a year ago, and I think it should have been addresses in this video. Sure, you can't know every little thing that comes out, ever, but it was massively hyped, won several awards, etc.
I disagree with witcher being soft magic, While yes the witches using their witchcraft their secrets are largely kept secret but for Witchers there is a cleanly established system of magic like Igni, Arrd etc which do their own thing can be used in many ways to solve a problem. There are alot of works that keep certain mysteries but lets you explore atleast on MC's side and if MC side is only perspective we can count on then probably witcher is sort of hard magic too rather than soft. Of course we'll never truly know the depth of how much yennefer can do, but I guess thats the charm of it.
I like hard magic less and less as time goes on. After a while you kind of just shrug, like you've sat through the latest certification course required before enjoying this or that piece of fiction. I'd prefer to simply be awed, to have something that is far more powerful than the characters can conceive. It's about how the author employs it, maybe as solutions, maybe with problems of its own, but also in keeping with the themes and meta aspects of the story. I'm not interested in "science but with swords and elves"
In a way, hard magic systems are an answer to "random bs go brrr" that too many authors rely on. Soft magic is supposed to be awe inspiring, but too often it devolves into the characters and magic doing whatever the story needs with no real thought. But ultimately, they aren't a competition. Sanderson didnt set out to ruin soft magic, but to create his own cosmere where rules matter. The existence of hard magic takes nothing away from soft magic that soft magic didnt take away by itself.
Your description of how soft and dark magic differ, remind me of how religion/myth and science/logic differ. In other words, Mistborn “Magic” at some point in its history was unknowable and people had to test their hypothesis and theories about metals. Science, too, has a way of disenchanting the mystique and wonder of nature and the human mind, like the northern lights or the placebo effect, respectively. Just because we know HOW something “magical” works doesn’t mean it stops being magical. That’s like pointing at a computer and saying it’s just 1s and 0s and metal parts.
Depends on how you define “magical”. To me, a good analogy is horror movies. The less you know about the monster / threat, the more you fill in the gaps the scariest way you can to form a full picture. The more you know about it the less scary it becomes, because you now have information about its limitations and how to avoid it / defeat it. So to me it’s a tradeoff. If the magic limits are well defined, the story has more opportunities for satisfying problem solving related plot points, but the more you know about it, the less awe-inspiring it becomes
You seem to have read a very limited amount of fantasy books and formed a strange misconception from that limited experience. Fantasy worlds are all different and there have always been a variety of styles of magic systems and Authors match the magic systems to the worlds.
As someone who loves classical and epic fantasy, stuff more in line with pulp and Tolkien, I'll always prefer soft magic systems. I'm also big on history and mythology and not really interested in the sciences. As such, I can appreciate a hard magic system with rationality and laws if its done well. However, I'll always prefer something more mystical and unknowable. Something dangerous and more superstitious in nature. I hesitate to use ASoIaF as an example because often times it felt like George Martin was just kind of throwing stuff out there and hoping to explain it later... In books he never got around to writing. In stuff like Conan or LoTR it always felt like there could be an explanation but the characters (and therefore the reader) are not aware of the mechanics. The genre is fiction for a reason. That is not to say that hard magic, or magic with a dose of reason, is invalid, but it is not my preference. Each style can be done well, but may also be done poorly.
It seems that by "soft", you simply mean magic isn't fully outlined in the story. You can absolutely have very concrete rules about how magic works and maintain mystery by never explaining those rules to the reader. And any magic system must have at least some concrete rules. Maybe you need a wand to cast spells, maybe all magic is in the form of potions, whatever it is. A story with no rules to its magic would mean the magic was just a way for the author to do whatever they wanted. Which also leaves the reader wondering why magic wasn't used at some point.
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Be careful not to confuse hard vs soft magic with high vs low magic. Just because the magic is prevalent in a setting does not mean it is necessarily well understood.
That is true, however you would expect people in a setting where magic is everywhere and commonly used in everyday life to have a decent understanding of it, while magic that is very rare would be less understood by the average peasant.
@ also, there is a difference to consider between people in the setting understanding how to use the magic and them understanding how the magic happens
@@ethans9379 Mhm. Not really though. For a pattern to be exploitable in a useful way it needs to follow some kind of predictable pattern, otherwise what good is it if the outcome of an action is random?
Absolutely. Say for instance, if you're going to have a story set partly at Faerie Courts, there's absolutely going to be stacks of magic and it's definitely going to be on the soft side--there will probably be rules of a sort, but they're going to be more ethical or thematic than they are mechanics in the normal sense. You know, stuff about the consequences of giving your word or owing debts or eating in the wrong place (which can also be a sort of debt) and so forth.
Just for clarification: The difference between a hard and soft magic system is, afaik, that in hard systems there are strict rules how the magic works, while soft magic means whenever the writer is stuck, he/she can pull a rabbit out of no hat at all and handwave everything.
Like Harry Potter: It gives the appearance of being a hard system, but then she wants to write a time travel story so the hard rules about it go out the window. The plot holes are big enough to drive one of the giant machines from pit mines through, but "hey, look, magic".
Otoh there is "hard magic" by Larry Correia in which magic is not quantified at all and there are no spells, but it got a rather strict system how it works and we get explained where it comes from. Or magic in computer games which is by necessity based in maths.
Or am I seeing this wrong and the difference is something else?
Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic
Any sufficientlt explained magic is indistinguishable from science
This is why it bugs me that people still go on and on about how hard magic or soft magic are always better than the other and don't acknowledge that they both have their pros and cons with soft magic is best used in movies and short form media versus hard magic which is better used in a more long-lasting long form media where the magic will be interacted with not just far more often but in a way that lacking explanation could leave irreversible plot holes
Beyond this I don't get how this dude doesn't understand that hard magic is in no way dead and that the most you could say is people are learning to weave some soft magic elements into hard magic systems to get the best of both worlds for longer form media allowing for mystery while still actually letting everything have an explanation and a reason but just one that maybe the audience has yet to see or learn or will be learned eventually in the world only for more mysteries and aspects of the magic to reveal itself later
Tye Irregular at Magic Highschool truly Embody's the Sufficiently advance Science is indistinguishable to magic type of story for me.
Nah, that is terrible.
@@kennethmana3103which is why i hate it. It isnt magic anymore, it's just technology
@@Needler13 well any Sufficiently advance Science is indistinguishable to magic.
I'll always prefer harder systems. I like learning how a power/magic system works and being able to theorize about possible ways it could be used in the future. For instance, in Avatar the last Airbender once you learn the basics of Earth bending you easily could have thought "So wait, could you then bend certain metals through the bits of earth that are in them?"
Same with waterbending, once you understand how it works you could very easily have wondered "The human body is over 70% water so could you bend the water or blood in a person's body?".
That's part of what makes hard magic systems so cool, they invite the audience to speculate about possibilities we could see explored later.
Thant's cool, but I prefer softer magic systems because in the universe of the world, magic has likely been a thing since creation, and has been practiced for thousands of years, but plucky teenagers figure out something new about it? That's a kinda conceited thing to buy into.
I mean I'm accepting magic, and thats new, but not human nature, which isn't new.
If it were possible, humans in this world would be casting magic, using psychic powers, etc.
We try; that's human nature. We're inquisitive, if something has been practiced for thousands of years then there's likely not something that's beeing outright overlooked. That's different from science which is constantly being built upon, its like the world only started to become lived in right when we start reading page one and then the cool stuff happens by shrewd inventors or intuitive genuises.
@grifflancer2999 the thing is in these worlds where magic has existed for several years if not centuries it often functions in a similar manner as science for them. New spells are going to be discovered, crafted, and recorded, likely even taught at schools. This is something I always consider when crafting any kind of power system, how would this power change the world in the coming years? People don't like being left in the dark about things and would try to understand magic in every way possible so that in the future it's just another form of science.
In reality magic would never be left as this mysterious force that no one understands because humans don't work like that, we will always want to understand that which we currently don't.
@grifflancer2999 in legends of korra it confirms there were ancient skills and techniques that get lost to time through life necessities, and circumstances but i understand ur point
@@MrEffectfilms this to me is the biggest advantage of hard systems. Also from the authors point of view. If you have rules, you encourage speculation between books and increase the discourse about your series between readers as well because they have elements to speculate what will happen next
Just remember that there's no need to 'prefer' when you can just have both.
Hell, Arcane has literally hard (solid) magic in hextech weaponry and a literally soft (more fluid) hextech core that seems to have a will all onto its own
*The literally hard magic having rules like "these unbreakable hands hit good, have rocket engines on em, and can lift themselves along with very heavy weights...unless the floaty magic power sphere craps out on you and then they're just giant chunks of extremely weighty metal "
I love when hard and soft are balanced. There are rules but not everything is known. As the author you can know all the rules of the magic but not tell the audience everything to avoid the pitfalls of soft magic.
Specially if the hard system and soft system complement each other thematically. *Chef’s kiss*
@@LoreGeist yes! The best ones 😊
@LoreGeist I would love a video showcasing series that do this! I wanna see how I could better do this dual magic system 🤩🤔
Absolutely, this is my favorite way to make magic, a balance between mysterious and understood, which is often how things work in the real world as well.
@MorgottofLeyendell Yes exactly! Some things are understood but not everything. You are right it feels more real in a way because we never know exactly everything about something and mystery keeps it fresh.
Hard magic systems are "over"? So, Brandon Sanderson doesn't break sales records every time he writes a new book? It's more a matter of writers (or, more specifically, publishers) have given up trying to out Sanderson one another. Even "soft" magic systems need some sort of rules and you often see the hero winning because he pulls some turn of the rules (like Willow making the baby "disappear" so Bav Morda's spell backfires or like the woman who beats the always-victorious gladiator who it's been prophesied will never lose in single combat by revealing she's pregnant).
Game of Thrones "soft" magic and Mistborn's "hard" magic existed side by side. I don't see it as much as a pendulum swinging, as simply a matter of what AUTHORS have written books that catch people's attention - and that has far more to do with the characters and stories in the books than their magic systems. People desperately following trends started by another author (which is how you get things like a "hard magic era") are often simply using the trend to compensate for weaknesses in other parts of the story.
Both "hard" and "soft" magic have their pros and cons for the story. They both have their costs. They both have their pitfalls. They both can seem contrived or wondrous, commonplace or mysterious depending on how you write them.
“Over” is an exaggeration of course 😅. The point of the video is that hard magic went through a period of saturation the last couple of decades because of everyone trying to be the new Sanderson and now soft magic is on the rise. Brandon Sanderson himself is experimenting more and more with it in the Cosmere.
The fact that soft magic is on the rise also doesn’t meant that there isn’t any good recent hard magic stories anymore, it’s just not the same trend as it was last decade.
But other than that, I agree with you that both have their setbacks
Bro has to eat by getting people to click on the video and comment. No hate or disrespect but don't take TH-cam video titles so seriously. Exaggerating is part of the game.
@LoreGeist Who the hell is "everyone"?
I don't know, I can come up with examples of both sides in many time periods, right now I can see that hard magic is still quite popular in anime
Hey, sorry if it looks like I'm a hater, but the title seems a bit click bait... a better one would be how to use soft magic, or something like this. I waited the whole vid for an argument on why hard magic systems are dead and you don't present none, imo. Basically, all soft magic examples are from 30+ years books, all older than Sanderson's, looks like a contradiction. Don't get me wrong, I agree with everything you described in terms of how to use a soft magic system and the benefits of it, but I believe you failed to prove your point. I'm not up-to-date on the new trends, booktok or booktube, I was expecting examples or some kind of data that support the claim that hard magic is losing popularity...
I mean you're not being a hater if you have a valid/presentable view point/argument to back it up (not just feelings) and of course most of these videos are click bait how else do you think these creators stay relevant?
And there's no reason not to have both -- you can have a hard magic system to define the restrictions that the characters operate under, but if don't come out with the details of how it works, you retain the mystery of magic. And nothing I'm hearing in the video to suggest that hard magic systems are bad, merely that the magic system needs to be tied into the world building, instead of feeling as if it's been slapped on the side.
@@DmdShiva the flip side to try to mixing hard and soft magic is to end up with a flabby magic system. Where the reader never knows what to expect and all the solutions seem like deus ex machina. I would rather have two different magic systems, one with defined rules and limitations, and another more mysterious, where the characters use the first to solve the problems, and the second keep the reader and character always at bay. Like Tolkien did, the ring and the magic items they have are hard, gandalf and sauron's power are soft. Or Brandon Sandersons Stormlight Archive, the Radiant powers are harder, old magic is softer. That's different from having a hard magic system that seems like soft in the beggining, but as the reader goes through the book it learns more about the magic and it reveals it hard. That's not a blend, that's just learning curve. And of course you probably want to keep some percentage of unknown, to either give you space to explore in possible future stories, or to keep it looking like magic, not just a weird law of physic.
Yeah I agree as well right from the get go he started contradicting himself and provided old books are reference for a hard magic system while starting Mistborn as the catalyst for it...
The topic is good, but the title and minor contradictions messed everything up.
Yeah I was waiting for him to give examples of industry trends but all of the books/series he talks about came out before mistborn which was his primary example of hard magic. Maybe romantasy leans towards soft magic but that is a sub genre thing and might not reflect fantasy as a whole.
I guess it goes into people wanting the mystery of magic to return.
@@TreyStation64 yeah, let’s see how long the trend lasts 😅
@LoreGeist some of my favorite series have hard magic systems. I wish I could write like that.
@@LoreGeist it'll last as long as good writers can take it
Plus, you can always just have both. A lot of super popular animated shows (that I have watched recently and am therefore thinking more of) do!
Dandadan has many solidly defined abilities (telekinetic hands, getting super strong at the cost of extreme bodily fatigue) but some of the greater entities and spirits baffle comprehension with how they can warp reality.
The fear-powered devils of Chainsawman are similar. Denji himself just sprouts chainsaws and regenerates by drinking blood. But then you run into a primal fear, like the darkness devil, and *oooooh boy*!
Finally, Arcane. Hex tech weapons (hard, literally solid magic) vs the very clearly alive and possibly aware primal rune.
Thank god, im tired of fantasy storys with magic sistems that look like a videogame character skill tree(yes, am looking at you, sanderson)
Mistery is one of the fundaments of magic in fantasy and adding too much rules to a magic sistem kills that fantasy.
@jordiveratriay1563 Well, those systems are made for people who probably encounter fantasy through gaming.
Softer magic is better when you want mysterious figures and focus on other parts of the story like lotr. Gandalfs magic was never focused on because it was just there.
But hard magic is better when you have a clear vision on how it works and it connects to the story as a whole. Like mistaken a clear vision was there and it directly correlated to the end.
In a hybrid story, you're never rooting for the person with soft magic to win the day. Humans are technical and have technical problems. I don't wanna read five books for you to win because you believed with all your heart this time!? I want my ultimate hero to be smart, or a good planner, crafty or observant, harder working, i'll even settle for lucky, because atleast i can relate to it.
@taurianferguson fair enough but you don't need to focus on the magic to be technical.
You could focus on swordplay or some other skill.
Perhaps the mystery of who killed a man or how a countrys politics works.
I don't think your wrong. As I don't like that all the time but I do think in that sometimes you don't need to go into the magic all the time.
@@LupusLore-l5c What you're asking for is kinda like a space opera where it's the same human stories but told against a futuristic backdrop. I want that sometimes too, but it kinda defeats the point of magical fantasy if the problems are solved with better monetary policy.
@@taurianferguson XD fair point but that would be an interesting story. Like DND magic needs components and that would involve money politics on a grand scale especially if magic was hyper destructive
Mistborn is a technothriller.
It requires hard rules and their understanding to work.
Introducing hard magic into a romance story, however, would be a ridiculous choice - it does nothing to enhance the important story, and hinders the connection between love and forces of nature. And this is what we're usually getting in the oversaturation corner.
I think the big problem people have and the point they miss with magic is that it's very much like people. People are often unpredictable and wild. Having hidden depths and strange aspects we do not get. Magic I think is a reflection like that. Hence why it always feels off when people try to reduce magic into a system or force that can be mechanized and commodified, all born from this weird need for control and predictability.
Magic tends to be shown as alive and with depths and mystery, just like a person. Always with a bit of change and wonder.
In my world, fey magic is soft, mysterious, and powerful.
My world's human magic is limited, subtle, and erratic. A human spell doesn't guarantee a nearly instant healing, it cuts healing time and reduces risk of complications. "Don't look" spells aren't for invisibility, but most folks won't notice your presence if you keep quiet. It's a hard magic sytem with varying results depending on factors like the magician's training, intent, ability to concentrate, physical well-being, and more. It's hard magic, but an art more than science.
I don't think hard magic is dying, rather a lot of stories from before the popularity of hard magic is getting adapted into movies and series.
There has to be an element of unpredictability in even a hard system. Look at the Book of Five Magics. The laws of magic were clear and well-known, but none of the schools of magic was without a flaw and the interaction between different arts was unpredictable.
The shift is the same reason things always shift: something becomes popular, everyone and their mother does it (many a hollow soulless copy), and it makes people start becoming tired of it. Especially the people perpetually chasing a sense of novelty.
This
Issue with soft magic is the everpresent danger of pulling solutions out of one's rear, especially to the point of readers going "wait...could he do that?"
It's why I think it a lot more when soft magic is made "hard" (chortle chortle) by making it the domain of human-seeming but ultimately inhuman things (deities/faustian devils etc). That way, you have the character's intent be clear while the mechanics remain as nebulous (and the consequences of such magic...potentially unintended)
This is the big problem with soft magic for sure. That’s why I wanted to discuss in the video a few techniques to avoid the reading feeling like this about it.
But I agree that it takes work to make your soft system not feel deus-ex-machine-ey and lazy
What you're delineating is a problem with execution not a problem with soft magic
I've always preferred hard magic because of how it can be use as a plot device
Why not introduce a magic system that has strict rules, but they're yet not well understood by the inhabitants of the world? The author abides to the rules, but the characters do not know how to explain what happened and how to duplicate it.
That could be an interesting angle
I can see that as being cool, like of the readers are trying to figure it out with like characters like a mystery
I would like to see a show where magic starts off soft but as the story progresses it becomes more hard as the MC finds and learns the rules and limits that magic can do.
It kinda goes with the way people discover science and natural phenomena in the real world. It could act as a good foil for exploring science as a theme
My favorite magic system has to be all the different types of magic present in Malazan (especially "standard" Warren-magic). It is "soft" in the sense that depending on who we are talking about and what the situation is, magic can do almost anything. Communicate with Gods in your sleep? Check. Travel great distances in a single day? Check. Summon demons? Sure. Imprison beings in a parallel dimension? Yup. Reincarnation? Firestorms with the power of nuclear bombs? Flying fortresses the size of mountains? Yes, yes, and yes.
However, while the magic might seen arbitrary at first, it is anything but. There are rules to the magic, even if they are not well understood and can be bent. The aspect of magic at play for example dictates what the practitioner can do and how well. Shadow for example is great for tricking people. Illusions and mind games. Ice, while obviously being able to literally freeze stuff, can also be used to freeze something in time, preserving whatever it covers in centuries long stasis. Etc.
What is additionally great with the magic in Malazan is, that most PoV characters are not magic users and if they are, they are often on the lower end of the power scale. A lot of PoV characters are just average soldiers, who know just enough about magic to know when to keep their heads down. Average citizens have even less of a clue and some even think of magic as mysterious or even made-up, because it does not affect their lives in any way. We never enter the heads of the few characters who really understand magic at a comprehensive level (which is a good choice by Erikson, because they are very inhuman godlike beings or straight up gods).
This works really well, since the style of the series in general is one that feels like uncovering and connecting the dots. Keeping magic somewhat mysterious works great with the way the story is told. In contrast the Cradle series also has a fantastic hard magic system, which works equally well its purpose of telling a power-scaling shounen-anime like story.
tldr: You magic system needs to fit the story you want to tell.
In Malazan, not only are there different kinds of magic (shadow, ice, whatever) there are also DIFFERENT KINDS OF MAGIC, whole different styles or approaches to power that don't really understand each other and whose capabilities and limitations and flavours are significantly different. So arguably, the "warren magic" that most human wizards seem to use feels to the reader like it would be a hard magic system if the reader knew enough about it to get the rules. But some of the other stuff feels, even to those human wizards let alone the reader, like "soft" magic that they don't understand and that may be just fundamentally mysterious.
It's really cool.
I would like to say I use both, hard magic for the protagonists because they know and the reader sees their limitations on what they can or can’t do, on the other hand the antagonists remain a mystery, little by little the protagonists learn what type of opponent they are facing. It allows for tense moments where the squad can’t simply rush separately for a 1 v 1 because that foe may be the counter to your ability. What you think?
Using both is great, specially if you’re writing a longer series and gets time/page real state to explore both types of magic with enough time. If it’s a shorter story it may be tricky to find room to explore all your magic aspects properly
@ yeah my story is a long journey so it allows me to freely abuse the soft magic while giving satisfaction of strategic decision making with the protagonists hard magic
I guess you could also think of it like, do you WANT to understand the magic, or do you want to keep it mysterious?
For those who want to be wizards/witches, and always play those kinds of characters in video games and/or D&D, you want to be in on how the magic works, you want to know all the hidden knowledge, the arcane secrets, the under-the-hood knowledge of how the magic works. These kinds of people are naturally drawn to hard magic systems.
If you don't care about all of that, and only care about how the magic makes you feel, then soft magic systems would naturally appeal to you more.
I like hard magic systems for their defined functionality but I also like soft magic systems due to their sense of freedom.
I find it has to be a balance of the two , if its to fantastical it's to lazy, to hard it gets to complex, which is hard to do as it tends to start to lean to one side or the other to far some times ,
I like "unsolved" hard magic. Stories where magic has rules but characters are yet to understand or discover how it works. Like you said is kind like a blend between the two. I like magic to have consequences and limitations, but I don't necessarily want it to feel like it is a D&D session at play.
I also enjoy when the rules and consequences are very bizarre and weird, it makes for great plot points of characters using magic in the "wrong" way.
Yeah, the “monkey paw” kinda stories are fun with a magic twist.
I also dislike when the magic system feels like D&D / video game and the characters talk about it in the most mechanical and unrealistic terms. Takes me right out of the story.
If anyone wants to read a novel or watch a series based on hard magic I suggest The Magicians.
I think that a combination of the two approaches is best. Even Sanderson has examples of "soft magic" within the cosmere but even if you are intimately familiar with his works, you start to realize that what you thought you knew about the systems was actually scratching the surface of something much deeper.
Stormlight archive is a good example of a hybrid approach, there’s soft and hard magic in the same setting
@LoreGeist Sure; you have Surges and then you have Cultivation's boons/curses. That said, if we go beyond this and delve into the harder systems like Allomancy and Awakening, you will start to realize that all of the powers are connected and interact in mysterious ways. And even beyond that, they all have a "Spiritual" component that currently remains completely mysterious.
I'm writing an ongoing online series titled Braided Power. Initially, I employed a hard magic system, but as I approach the conclusion of season one, I am transitioning to a softer magic system. I am concerned that this shift might confuse my readers. Could anyone offer some advice?
A lot of the stories I'm working on exist in the same world, many generations apart and on different parts of the world. The magic ebbs and flows so one book is going to have people using magic as casually as we use technology (someone who can use light magic makes a microwave while messing around) and others where it's almost dead. There's an evolution of magic as time goes on and so I don't contradict myself from one story to the next, I'm trying to keep the magic system softer in nature. But one of my characters is really good at healing magic and works at a hospital. And that got me thinking, "in a world of healing magic and potions, (same story with the magic microwave) why would anyone need to practice medicine?" I had to give specifically that area of magic "hard magic" rules because I can't stop over thinking it.
Once you go in depth into the world of tolkien you start to see an inkling of hard magic that was just never explored. From the singing that creates the world to the shaping and corruption of beings, especially in the crafting of the rings which was a teachable system.
The ring has a lot of hard magic elements for sure. Gandalf and Galadriel definitely lean more toward soft magic though
There is of course the possibility to use both at the same time. Let's say that on one side you have alchemy or magic that has hard rules and is predictable.
On the other side you could have prayers to deities. The deities could answer the prayer in ways their priest did not ask for, but the end result is better. Like the hero is wounded and priest prays for the hero to be healed. The deity grants the healing, but not completely or too slow for the hero to participate in the next battle where the enemy had a trap prepared where the hero would have died. Done wrong this can come over like a deus ex machina, but done right? There is a lot of potential. This wouldn't be like in Dungeons & Dragons where it's a sure thing that a prayer would be answered. We know the mess Troi was because of the gods. You could have priests of the same deity on both sides of a conflict and the deity answers both their prayers.
I like both, but I prefer creamy hard magic systems, which are simple to understand with basic rules. Soft magic is also good for horror novels to make the atmosphere more scary and mysterious.
Same argument stands for hard and soft scifi... the problem is we often forget the point of the entire world building project is to tell a story, be it sci fi, or fantasy, or anywhere in between (i myself am guilty of such abomination as a scifi fantasy... you just can't not love the half breed two headed monster you create when you have one of those)
Always keep this in mind people, do what makes your story go, and remember, the magic is in the balance (pun intended 😉) magic is magic, if it's science then it's just tech, some sense should be possible to make, but you just don't have to explain everything...
For example, you have a hero who has to result to magic left and right and centre only to survive a more powerful magic thrown at him by the enemy, you get to see how a lifetime of preparations have made your hero able to cast those spells, and perhaps each tricks needs it's own runes and chants and ingredients, but then you will see people defeating that said more powerful enemy magic, at much greater costs, giving up their lives or limbs or in pain or even dignity... and then you can only imagine the immensity of the cost the end game magic in the plot going to toll at the heroes and the world, foreshadowing and all that jazz...
I dare to say, if there's a cost to your magic, it's already as hard as you would ever need it... leave the rest of your magic to stay... magical...
Yeah, you’re basically talking about power scaling / power creep which is also important. If there’s no sense of progressive danger with the magic, it’s hard to assess how a random threat has less power than the main villain / big boss, other than the author saying the villain is “stronger”.
@@LoreGeistthis is why i liked shikamaru vs temari in naruto. Temari is clearly stronger but she technically lost because she was outsmarted. I feel like power creep can be slowed, halted or even reversed by introducing characters that can outsmart and defeat their opponents despite their opponents being stronger. In naruto shipuuden and boruto, the characters arent really outsmarting each other anymore. Most fights are just "my energy blast vs your healing/attack" and it makes it boring
@@jismeraiverhoeven yeah, shikamaru’s fights were usually so great because of this. Limited power but creative problem solving. It’s a shame Naruto went off the rails with the power creep later
Soft magic works best when you aren't writing stories about magic users. Though hard magic sucks all the fun of that for me too, this is why I prefer a layered magic system with a base of soft magic, where harder (though preferably not to the point of a hard science) magic is employed by the magic user.
Star Wars used to do this pretty well, not so much anymore.
Magic should always be more art than science.
I don't believe in the distinction between soft magic and hard magic. I feel like it's coming from a wrong understanding of science applied to fiction, where it claims to make a "scientific" explanation of how the magic works, when even science as we do it in our world is really just "as far as we can explain...". This often means that there's not only "this is how magic works" inside the story, but also word of god that yes, this is actually what happens on a fundamental level in the world's physics. And that, fundamentally, makes magic lose its sense of wonder.
But when you look again at the science of our world, and how ideas evolved, they are mostly "if...then" observations that are explained with an idea of how things we cannot see are working under the hood, but that's more often than not an educated guess, and it's replaced by the next, better guess. This is often missing from hard magic systems, it's just "this is how it works and has always worked", it's not an evolving body of ideas, it's not a representation of the culture it stems from, it has no regard for class or intelligence of the people, etc. It just works.
So as soon as there is magic in a world, people will try to explain it. Some explanations will be better than others, but most likely all of them will be flawed. When compared to our history, are we in a more animistic phase of human history, where people might understand magic as talking to the spirits inside objects, or would it be more like our modern world, where magic is explained with forces and particles? In both cases, the wizard can make the rock float, just his understanding of the situation might be different.
The thing that makes "hard" magic so "boring" is that the magic is treated like we treat technology today, ubiquitous, blase, matter of fact. If the characters don't express any sense of wonder over the magic in the world, why should I as a reader feel that? And if the magic is part of the world's everyday life, that is absolutely valid. It doesn't mean ALL magic is like that as well, it can easily be that you have folk magic that people use in their everyday life, but at the same time there are far greater magical powers out there, that only a rare few can wield.
When looking at Avatar, I have a hard time categorizing it as hard magic in any sense of the way. People know "if I move in this way, I can manipulate the elements", but even that isn't true for everyone, just some people. Then they don't study the bending like science, it's a lot more philosophy, martial arts, even copying animals in a lot of cases. Add to that things like the moon spirits and the Avatar himself, and you'll see that nothing is really explained as hard as it might look at first.
I Am also definitely an author who tries to blend the two types of magic. It's definitely a challenging way to write, but it has helped me make a richer world where action scenes feel like exciting puzzles, while softer spells are driven in emotional moments.
I like a hybrid approach as well :) it’s hard to do it well though
I doubt they’re dead. Plenty of people still like magic systems that have rules and limits.
Personally, I think we might want to think about giving some more attention to medium Magic systems for a while
Yeah! Dead is an exaggeration of course since this sort of thing is always cyclical. But out of the 20 most popular fantasy books in 2024, only one had a clear hard magic system (Sanderson).
@LoreGeist I think the main “issue” is that the more limitations there are, the harder it is for someone to insert an OC (themself) into that world as a completely OP God-tier badass, which is what everyone does at some point, admittedly or not. 😆
So yeah, it’s all in the cycle as you said.
Both have their strengths. I tend to read manga, manhua, manhwa and their respective webnovels, and I really appreciate how hybrid magic systems allow for more depth and intrigue without the reader feeling like the character doing things it shouldn't be able to. It allows for layers of complexity hidden in simplistic design
I like hybrid a lot too
The name of the wind is a great example of a world building with soft and hard magic coexisting
One could make the argument that the difference may come down to a matter of perspective. Soft magic works tend to be told from the POV of someone who does not have magic (most characters in a Song of Ice and Fire) or someone who has an incomplete knowledge of it (Harry Potter). The limits of these magic systems may not be fully explained, but as the character learns more about those limits so do we.
For my own work, two of the three drafts I'm working on lean more into hard magic than soft. In one it is simply the matter that most magic comes from materials with limited capabilities. In the other, a subset of characters have very defined abilities inherent to their subgroups. My third draft leans towards soft magic, but it is told from the POV of someone who isn't exactly knowledgeable about magic and that story focuses more on creatures than casters.
been talking about this with friends for so long! thank you for introducing me to the terms hard magic and soft magic. it's gotten so prevalent, and it's fun every once in a while, but i want my soft magic! only real problem i've had isekai is the "voice of god" systems and the inevitable "it's just like a video game!" trope. i want my lodoss magic back! lose the skill points! it adds nothing important.
Yeah, to me it breaks immersion when we’re literally informed about how many mana points someone use to cast a spell or something, the author may know about this but it should be conveyed in a more organic way
Then we have Frieren. It's definitely a hard magic system as in it feels like it has rules and limits, but it still passes a sense of wonder and mistery for some reason
@@ayoncruz as long as i know frieren magic sistem is considered soft magic, you can do anything as long as you understand what are you doing and how works the world.
Frieren is not a hard magic system. Pokemon is a hard magic system.
Would the witches in AHS:Coven or Apocalypse or Delicate be soft or hard magick?
Probably soft magic, the rules are not very clear and there’s often no cost to the magic
@ thanx! Just wondering
My personal favorite is a medium magic system, halfway between hard and soft. I like when magic has some guidelines and rules, but there is still a ton of wiggle room.
I like a good mix as well
There will always be those who aren't satisfied with soft magic, because everything needs to be studied and picked apart. Even then, as these hard magic systems inevitably prove, you can't explain everything satisfactorily and you eventually have to break the system or start to admit that there's things you just can't explain about the magic.
Good news for me! About to release my debut fantasy book, and it's about as soft as you can get...
Good luck with your release!
@ Thank you! I'm excited and nervous and ahhhhh
Reads title.
Me: because if i wanted magical science, I'd read science fiction.
I want magic with loose rules.
Hence why i like brent weeks.
I don't write by what is "In" i write by what i like. I like to have both. A harder, well explained magic system that also has softer elements that are not as explained. That way Wizards can get stymied when they run into magic they don't understand, and it will reflect their perspective whether they get vexed or fascinated.
I’ve always preferred softer magic systems, the idea of there being a mystery to it and those who use it feel special or that magic is something borrowed and not commanded.
On Hard vs Soft you could it where things expand as in a Hard system not everything is known. Like in Avatar when Toph develops Metal Bending. Or how Blood Bending is an extension of water bending. Using the magic in uncommon ways.
Also on Hard not knowing everything you could have a system that the people think is hard but actually soft due to people in the world misunderstanding it. This is common in our own history people use to think everything revolved around the Earth and had to come up with convoluted ways to explain the motion of the planets. Or how it feels like modern people like to make fun of ancient theories like everything being made of the 4 elements is seen as silly. However I look at it as ancient people with no concept of atomic theory trying to explain the 4 states of matter, Earth/Solid, Water/Liquid, Air/Gas, and Fire/Plasma. With out a concept of atoms they wouldn't understand phase shifts in atomic bonds that shift them into different states.
A lot of scientific theories are seen as "good enough" to the point we still even use some that we know to be incorrect such as Newton's formulas on motion and force. Einstein's Special Relativity is far more accurate but unless you are dealing with very far distances and/or high speeds than it's not worth all the extra effort and so we still use Newton's formulas because they are close enough in everyday use that it doesn't matter. It's a bit like rounding up/down when doing a math problem as it's not truly the correct answer but it's close enough.
As such I think it would be kinda cool to have a hard magic system where the world gets the rug pulled out from under it as what they thought they knew was just the surface and good enough for their day to day usage but perhaps has some unintended consequences or gets used in unforeseen ways by the antagonist.
This idea of always grounding people’s understanding of magic to how our society understood science throughout the ages is really cool because it’s a good proxy on how humanity would handle magic if it existed. Both tackle understanding truths about the world and how we behave knowing those truths. It’s always a good anchor for magic.
Never thought about this parallel between the four elements and the four states of matter
I think Frieren did a great job with developing a hard magic system that leaves enough unknown to create interest in learning more about its world.
I get the preferences with both hard and soft magic. With my story im personnally trying to go with hard magic because i love that one so much. I love magic that has limits, drawbacks, strengths and weakness that are deeply understood not juat by the reader but the world itself. Because pike you said its so much moee satisfying when they so somwthing unique with it in that scenario. So thats what im trying. Goal is to sort of tie magic to their lifeforce. This is because magic is so entwined in the universe and the people that they never lived without it. So if you push yourself to exert all your magic potential without rest you could pass out or wven die from exhaustion because its as if your bled out or ran out of breathe. Its apart of life. Reason some if not most just pass out though is because like irl your body will try to self preserve itself so itll just knock you out so you cant die due to exhausting all your magic.
Hard magic should have always been called “fantasy science”
“Unknowable”, “impenetrable by reason”was always an important property of magic and hard magic directly contradicts that.
I have a magic system that can fluctuate between hard and soft states depending on the medium of the magic, the more attunement one has over their magical domain, the more consistent and rational that magic becomes. Magic is ultimately a metaphor though, and if it is used without the wisdom to understand its philosophical foundations, then the spell will definitely go wild and probably recoil, or manifest as a curse.
Love a good magic system tied to a theme 👌
The problem of hard magic systems is: no one is keeping tabs on the limitations. Like how many mana points has the character left or if they can channel their magic juice though the lymphatic system instead of the bloodstream. Shadow of the Conqueror by Shad, beside being a uninspired copy of The Stormlight Archives (with less fun and more rapes) just frauds the reader at the end by saying "I can channel my mana now in a very specific ability and not just my muscles and my sensory organs like everyone in this universe does!"
I prefer the much fairer approach of Matt Dinniman in his Dungeon Crawler Carl series where a unexpected synergy of spells is used both to aid and disadvantage the protagonists in different times and the opponents are smart enough to figure out some of their own.
It would be interesting to have a world where common mage had a hard magic system but there was layer of higher being- gods or ancients or something- that had very powerful soft magic system.
I've enjoyed hard magic systems--even written them in my main series--but I'm very much on board with the turn toward softer magic. Watching Opera North's production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Nibelung's Ring, aka The Ring Cycle), I was greatly inspired by the mythic, numinous approach to magic, and I hope to see more fantasy series going in that direction.
Personally I like when Hard Magic is the base story while Soft Magic running in the background.
Like in Harry Potter universe there are also Ancient Magics that even modern wizard didn’t understand.
Or in Trails Series they create device for people to use magic-like power but still has Real Magic as the legend and mythology.
(And super advance version of Hard Magic too. So it like has 3 version of magic in that game series)
I like this mix aswell
The Fate franchise is a fusion of both. It has rules yet it's not known and understood to a science, it's still mysterious and supernatural
I sort of feel like whether or not a magic system is 'hard' or 'soft' basically boils down to how well it is understood. Just because we don't know what the rules are doesn't necessarily mean there aren't any. I think any good author should know the limitations of the magic system in their story, even if we as the readers are left in the dark.
I lean more towards hard but unlimited or hybrid systems; maybe these are the same thing, but let me try to explain. For me, a hard system is good because you know what you can and can't do and thus know exactly what you have to work with so as to overcome challenges; but at the same time, within the bounds of those rules, there should be no limits to what a person can achieve. A fire bender may never be able to magic water, but he should be able to cause or prevent a volcano's eruption; a water bender can't magic fire, but he should be able to command the tide. This offers a clear chance for progression and possible opportunities to break the limits such a system might impose upon its users. On the other hand, creating hybrid systems where people think they know the rules only to discover that said rules are closer to suggestions or are actually socially/legally-imposed limitations offers endless possibilities for conflict and development. When I brainstorm new ideas, I often find myself creating multiple systems per setting (usually no more than three), each of which fall in different places along the scale or one big system that has multiple facets to it and each facet falls somewhere along a morality scale rather than a hard-soft scale.
For example, an idea I've been playing with recently possesses a hard "magic" system in the form of alchemy and herbology and a soft system in the form of miracles and sorcery. The thing here is that alchemy and herbology are not magic, but a mix of institutionalized science and traditional folk medicine, respectively; only charlatans claim these are magical practices and only those too ignorant to know otherwise would believe such claims. On the other hand, the power to work miracles is given only to the pious and morally righteous, so that they might do good works in the world; should a miracle worker have a crisis of faith or fail to remain righteous--should they stop being a good person in service to a good cause--or if they simply refuse to use their gifts, the gifts can and will be taken away. Sorcery is a corrupting, evil force that tempts people to give into their curiosity, vices, and greed, making greater sacrifices of themselves and others along the way until they at last commit the ultimate sacrilege and become true sorcerers, damnation incarnate. What makes this a hybrid system is the fact that it's actually possible to mix and match the sciences with either, but not both, of the magics and create even more powerful forces to work with.
You have put the Stormlight Archive as an example of something in between, as well as the shards since they are entities in which their most typical powers of a soft magic are not defined. I believe otherwise, it is true that stories may seem like this because the reader has little knowledge of the magic system, as you read you discover those rules and see that even the shards have perfectly defined that things can or cannot do and what is the scope of these. In the same way that Undmade are examples of how sinister mitilogical entities fit perfectly into a hard magic system.
Partially agree. There could be more mystery, but one just has to balance and blend mystery with the rules.
Logical but weird and unpredictable outcomes can also feel mysterious such as the teleportation science in Half-life.
Sci Fi I believe is not only about being grounded in-world consistent rules, we see some works have the appearance of sci fi but if the actual underlying real world science is shows a poor grasp despite the fiction being internally consistent, then its also debatable how sci fi that work is.
Whereas fantasy is more than its vibe of myth and folklore, but also caricature.
Technically Star Wars would be more of a space fantasy for example wheras The Expanse would be more Sci Fi.
I usually create a magic system with hard rules, but the people of the world I create don't necessarily understand it's rules/limitations/possibilities.
Plot holes and deus ex machina are not problems related to the magic system, they are narrative problems, and both systems aren't more or less susceptible to them. For example, in Mistborn important plot points tend to be solved by Vin figuring something out about the system that was established previously to not work like that (you can't pierce copper clouds, you can't move metals attached to flesh), especially at the end of book 1 where mist twirling around mistborns come into play, and it ended up being something VERY convenient to solve the final conflict, because the twirling could have literally meant anything, but then the story excuses itself under you simply not knowing how the system fully worked yet so it's fine if new rules get added.
So at the end of the day hard magic doesn't really add any more stakes if it can change its own established rules whenever it wants, if you can always just keep the full rules unexplored until they are needed. Sure, 'foreshadowing' and whatever, but foreshadowing is easy to write in any story, that's what revision is for. I could have Gandalf throw a giant fireball into the battlefield and be like "umm that was foreshadowed by him saying he's the servant of the Secret Fire, and the carrier of the Flame of Anor", you can add a little more 'foreshadowing' if you want by adding small scenes of him creating small campfires or whatever, but that wouldn't make the giant fireball scene any less convenient when used.
The main purpose of "hard" systems seems to be to generate opportunities for the hero to heroically get around the rules. John Clute called these get-arounds "quibbles" and they have a long history going back into folklore and myth, before anyone thought of defining "systems". The fantasy of avoiding the daily grind is a powerful one.
For sure! I’m just saying that it’s easier for soft magic to feel deus-ex-machina-ey, but that can also be avoided with good writing.
On way to avoid soft magic from becoming Deus ex machina is to not have magic be the solution to the main story's plot.
Another thing people tend not to notice about the hard magic system is how it is used to push for secularism and the elimination of all things with a spiritual aspect.
For example, look at the Marvel movies where they try to explain away the Gods' power as advanced tech, which makes no sense with characters like Loki and Hella. Not to mention Dr. Strange's magic is just advanced math etc.
Avatar the Last Airbender was heavily spiritual but the Kora series undermined that aspect. Same for Star Wars "The Force" when they introduced methacholine.
Vamps, weres, and zombies are viruses, shrooms, and chemical lab accidents. They are no longer pushed as curses or magic
That’s an interesting perspective. Fiction indeed tries to shy away from magic sounding to spiritual or religious I guess
What about the magic system in the Supernatural series? It seems like they combine both hard and soft magic.
It seems like the primary difference between hard and soft magic is how well explained it is, but in principle, all magic is "sufficiently explainable" if the author just bothered to do that. A thing I would like to point out regarding this discussion, is that the application of "magic" is extremely loose, particularly as it relates to Sanderson. Magic is a general system that allows devising particular ways to do particular things. Most of what passes for "magic" systems in Sanderson's work is not magic, but rather a collection of supernatural abilities (with supernatural here just being a gloss for anything that doesn't work according to real world physics. Magic is supernatural, but not everything supernatural is magic.). That being said, I don't think Sanderson actually every uses magic systems, nor knows what they are.
I preger a hybrid system myself, especially, in regards to a situation where being a mage is rare.
The difference between “soft” and “hard” magic stems from seeing magic as conscious or unconscious.
Prehistoric people thought of magic as self-aware, either as a single conscious magic force, or a lot of little magic spirits, each with its own home and name. Why are “magic words” needed to cast spells in so many cultures around the world? Because you literally have to talk to the magic spirits or forces to ask them to do what you want. You have to call them, often by name, say exactly what it is you need from them, and bribe, cajole or threaten them into doing it. You may even need to give them a pep talk to convince them they can do what you’re demanding. Spell components, in turn, are often offerings to the spirit in exchange for the boon you want. Conscious magic strongly tends to be soft magic, because conscious beings are unpredictable. They may be in a good mood or bad, like or dislike the person talking to them, want or not want the gift you offer or the service you promise, be busy or bored, even be wide awake or asleep. So you can never be sure just what will happen when you call on conscious magical beings.
Over time, people began to see parts of the world as unconscious and mechanical. The world was divided between the “natural,” which was unconscious and predictable, and the “supernatural,” which was still conscious and thus harder to control. Magic, in turn, split between rituals and formulas which were still intended to appeal to conscious beings and those that merely manipulated or analyzed the unconscious, natural world - astrology, for example, where the predictable and unconscious movements of stars and planets produced what were thought to be predestined, immutable results on Earth. This unconscious magic is “hard” magic, and if confirmed by experiment, it tends to shade into science. Ultimately, we arrived at the Newtonian idea that treats the whole universe as mechanical and predictable, leaving no supernatural realm and thus no room for magic at all, even raising the frightening possibility that our own consciousness and freedom of choice may be an illusion.
Of course, there can be middle grounds between these extremes. Over time, humans develop laws, customs, and policies to make their dealings with each other safer and more predictable. Humans and magical spirits might well do the same; over a thousand years, calling on a spirit to do your bidding may become less like a white trapper and a Native American hunter nervously negotiating a furs-for-guns deal, each with a hand on their weapon, and more like a share sale on the New York Stock Exchange, done with total confidence at breakneck speed. In turn, quantum mechanics and chaos theory both suggest some inextricable randomness to the physical world, which may be reflected even in hard magic.
Still, other factors being equal, the more conscious magical forces are, the softer the magic system will be, and vice versa.
This is really interesting.
Just to add to the quantum mechanics point you raised. At some point the human brain is physically incapable to process and understand natural phenomena when science progresses (quantum physics as it advances, 4th and 5th dimensions), etc. Which means science eventually circles back to being inexplicable and awe-inspiring.
It's simple to me, I think that sometimes the writer feels obligated to explain their magic. Once more writers understand that they can get away with not explaining their magic too much, then I feel the problems begin to go away. For example, I can make a "hard" system with rules and consequences but I don't explain the why or point out all the nuances. If my young wizard foolishly casts 10 spells in quick succession instead of his usual 6 then he will die from a brain hemorrhage. I believe if I convey consequences without spoiling the mystery, then I personally believe hard systems can work.
The problem with hard magic is that as sanderson says hard magic lets you solve problems with magic. But the point of all fiction is that problems are human problems with human solutions. Not magic solutions.
The thing about hard magic systems is that in a sense, they're just science fiction with new add-on physics (arguably SF where psionics are important is fantasy with spaceships, but I digress). But I don't think that means hard magic systems are, ever will be, or should be dead. I LIKE science fiction, and there's NOTHING WRONG with extending it to add extra physics and technology to explore and setting it somewhere that tech from the normal physics is low, thus letting the extra, alternate physics shine.
But I like fantasy too. So I wouldn't want hard magic systems to really take over, because I do want to keep on having fantasy to read. I don't want there to stop being room for the likes of Patricia McKillip or Charles de Lint.
I would disagree with two magic system classification as soft to hard
There are indeed two types of magic in fantasy one been methodological and the other been phenomenological
In the first interpretation you could say that magic ranges from soft to hard: LotR -> HP -> Cosmere
But this classification imo misses the point of the intent of the magic in the story. You could say that both HP and Cosmere has underlying principles on how magic works but the same is not true for LotR
LotR | HP(soft) -> Cosmere(hard)
One type of magic veers, at varying degrees, to what we know and the other embraces/explores the unknown
The difference between a soft and a phenomenological magic might appear to be subtle at a first glance but once you look at it the difference is noticeable
Just my 2 cents
How I would go about it is this: Whose perspective is the story being told from? Is it a wizard who has strudied magic for years? Or someone else who can be expected to have deep indepth knowledge of magic? In that case, hard magic makes sense. Otherwise, all the audience learns is what the PoV character learns, which may me as little as "Just don't worry about the magic and let me handle it" said by the wizard.
Lotr soft magic (from gandalf, sauron glaurung in the silmarillon, etc) has to do with how theology understands spiritual beings like angels/demons and their will in contrast to mortals. It is about imposing their will.
I've reach a point that If I want to read a good magic story I will write one myself
Avatar is definitely a hybrid system.
There are _some_ rules we understand well... But there are also so many unknowns and variables.
In Avatar it is puy on display how a lot of limitations of the system come from tradition and how it is the people who actively choose to learn the untraditional that truly excel and find new and unique applications of their element's magic.
Also, in games, I feel that nothing is worse than letting hard and soft magic coexist.
It makes the player ask questions like "how come _they_ can do this but _I_ cannot?
If you make the player follow a set of rules, these rules should apply to the rest of the characters, too... That doesn't mean others can't be more powerful. It just means that that power has to make sense.
As a good example: in the Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Arantir does casually display feats of power that are only available to the player character at the moments when they give their all. But he never feels like he's "breaking the rules". There are undead and demon summonings, but these, in turn, are never done haphazardly in combat. You get a sense that these are rituals that are done specifically to achieve that greater level of power - and it is never implied that such things are beyond the player character's ability - he just isn't ever put into a setting where that would be viable throughout the game.
Using game of thrones and Witcher as a return to soft magic is an odd choice as both of those predate Sandersons laws of magic
Soft magic is easier to work with because it doesn't have the hard rules.
Hard magic is great for those who like to delve into the rules and imagine the possibilities.
Soft magic is great because you can follow it like guidelines but also do extra stuff. Maybe break the rules a little, but you didn't write hard rules so you aren't technically breaking them.
I think the best example is Harry Potter's patronus charm. In book three it was very advanced magic, in book 5 it was something anyone could produce when not under duress by a dementor, in book 6 it could now send messages, in book 7 it was used to make an announcement and carry a verbal message. Why? What part of repelling a dementor, the purpose of the charm, includes sending a message? In reality, it was a prevalent spell that was well known to the audience, so instead of introducing something new tacking it onto something that exists is just simpler.
I've always enjoyed mysterious magic more than hard systems. That's why mages exist, to be the ones that study and develop it. But I also enjoy when magic is a character itself in a sense.
I will always prefer Hard Magic Systems, personally… Buuuut they can easily become convoluted and needlessly complex and that is probably where they lose people.. and Technically.. even soft magic systems still have rules.. at least they should, but they are only known to the writer, like how the spice in dune works and the Force in star wars. I like the magic system of avatar because there is a set of simple rules, so there are limits and/or consequences. My big issue with soft magic systems is the lack of any answers… I don’t need to know everything about a magic system but id like to know enough that it makes SOME degree of sense. I hate that soft magic systems, IMO, are more likely to find lazy writing and cop-outs… the writer has written a main character into a corner and instead of rewriting that particular part to be BETTER they come up with lazy get out of jail free powers that they pull out of their ass and then sometimes that ability is never even seen or heard being used again. Heres an idea people… Why cant we stop labeling magic with soft or hard… that’s overly simplistic, why not just make your own system without those two in mind and come up with what YOU want. Creators should be more concerned with what they want to create instead of what everybody else is making/writing. I wish people had the GUTS to fail.. At least try and be original >
Personally Im a fan of a soft magic with a hard magic base. where the basic rules are explained and can be understood. but that the way you can combine and use these basic rules can infinitely combined and twisted and loophole making the magic mysterious and unknowable.
Like how to write and caste a spell are hard but as long as you do the work and set up, anything kind of spell can be made. Even something tht would break the world if you achieve it.
Sanderson effect on the next generation of authors has just begun. (especially given that Mistborn, in 2024, is at an all time peak in popularity)
Personally I expect to start seeing alot more hard magic from new/young authors, before the genre settles into a healthy mix of the two.
I see hard magic having a new resurgence in the future. Yeah
See, I think I like an internal hard magic system accessible in glossaries but not explained in the story. People find the mystery but it is grounded with it's own rule set
I enjoy the way fiction related magic relates to ritual magic.
LoTR’s soft magic was rooted in Christian influence, where magic is limited to those of either divine or demonic influence. Hard magic is more in line with pagan/witchcraft, like we see in Harry Potter.
I was inspired by the talks of Neil Degras Tyson and his love of science and the way he talks about the recent discovers found is what inspired me to put secrets, themes, and plotlines behind the magic system system
I don't know if I agree with your categorizations at all. I will just say it like this, in a novel which is trying to focus on the party at large the reader simply doesn't need to know the mechanics of the magic that the 1 wizard in the party is using. It's enough for the reader to know that's a mage and for some reason he/she can do magic. That is your Gandalf type magic, I would still say his magic has a science behind it but we the reader aren't privy to it and there is no need for us to know it since the story isn't about the wizards of Middle Earth but about the Ring of Power so any mage characters are more backdrops rather than the subject matter itself.
Harry Potter on the other hand, is an entire story where wizardry and witchcraft is the focus of the entire world building and plot so ofcourse breaking everything down to a science to the point we even need to learn how the wands work and what different type of mythical creature parts were infused with said wands. So I don't think there is a "hard and soft" magic system, I think it just depends on whether the author wants to write a story centered around magicians or not to determine whether said author should completely break down their magic system to a science or just iterate that there are magic users in the story, and they are powerful and leave the rest to the imagination of the audience.
I don’t see them as two discreet categories. They are opposite ends of the spectrum. Harry Potter has hard and soft elements in its magic system
I feel like the push for hard magic is often just so internet pedant critics can have another tool to nitpick how the series is unrealistic because "He was carrying that iron, so it must have been less than 10 kilograms, but we know that in order to get a semicircular 10 meter fire burst you need 12 kilograms of iron. And then he used a paralysis spell? Thats not possible from elemental manipulation. So many plot holes, why doesn't he just fly to the moon next"
I've read two recent series NOT by Sanderson. The First was Arcane Ascension by Andrew Rowe. It was a hard magic system with rules and restrictions about how magic worked and who could wield it. And the magic system was good and interesting. It was the plot that eventually turned me off, with more progressive elements becoming dominant. The Second was the Riyaria Revelations which had a soft magic system where magic is an art and can't be taught, only developed. But the characters and plots were better and I ended up buying those. So it's not about the magic systems, it's about how that fits in the story and if that story is good.
Personally speaking, I prefer hard magic systems. I like to make sense of the world(s) around me, and unexplained mysteries and ambiguities feel unsatisfying to me.
The worst extremes of soft magic systems, at least in my opinion, are those found in horror stories, where the lack of rules and the unpredictability is by intent, to make things more frightening. Fear of the unknown / unknowable, etc.
I didn't particularly care about the magic in a Song of Ice and Fire. It was there, it disrupted human plots, that's it. The only thing I found interesting about it was how magic had completely vanished, to the point where people took it for mere myth, and suddenly it's coming back. A bit like the Shadowrun backstory, with magic suddenly re-emerging in 2012, together with a new age on some old Mayan calender.
Magic in Tolkien is basically irrelevant, if you ask me. What made Gandalf powerful were his age, experience and skills. Lighting the occasional pipe with magical fire was window dressing. Sure, prophesies and sometimes even miracles happen, but that's it, they happen and nothing more.
Don't get me wrong, there can also be too much focus on magical systems and rules. The Black Prism series by Brent Weeks is a great example of a meticulously laid out magical system placed over a world full of inconsistencies and implausible characters. It's been years since I read it, but between unsympathetic main characters making one questionable decision after another and flaws in the lore (how the F would an extremely poor kid in a pre-industrial society end up obese?!), at some point I just put it away and never finished the whole mess.
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One thing, though:
The best Story about magic published in the last few years, without a doubt, is the manga/anime Frieren: Beyond Journey's End.
It came out just about a year ago, and I think it should have been addresses in this video.
Sure, you can't know every little thing that comes out, ever, but it was massively hyped, won several awards, etc.
You’re not the first to implement Frieren in the comment section here. I’ll check it out :)
I disagree with witcher being soft magic, While yes the witches using their witchcraft their secrets are largely kept secret but for Witchers there is a cleanly established system of magic like Igni, Arrd etc which do their own thing can be used in many ways to solve a problem. There are alot of works that keep certain mysteries but lets you explore atleast on MC's side and if MC side is only perspective we can count on then probably witcher is sort of hard magic too rather than soft. Of course we'll never truly know the depth of how much yennefer can do, but I guess thats the charm of it.
I like hard magic less and less as time goes on. After a while you kind of just shrug, like you've sat through the latest certification course required before enjoying this or that piece of fiction. I'd prefer to simply be awed, to have something that is far more powerful than the characters can conceive. It's about how the author employs it, maybe as solutions, maybe with problems of its own, but also in keeping with the themes and meta aspects of the story. I'm not interested in "science but with swords and elves"
In a way, hard magic systems are an answer to "random bs go brrr" that too many authors rely on. Soft magic is supposed to be awe inspiring, but too often it devolves into the characters and magic doing whatever the story needs with no real thought.
But ultimately, they aren't a competition. Sanderson didnt set out to ruin soft magic, but to create his own cosmere where rules matter.
The existence of hard magic takes nothing away from soft magic that soft magic didnt take away by itself.
I agree. There’s room for both and both can work when done well
Your description of how soft and dark magic differ, remind me of how religion/myth and science/logic differ.
In other words, Mistborn “Magic” at some point in its history was unknowable and people had to test their hypothesis and theories about metals. Science, too, has a way of disenchanting the mystique and wonder of nature and the human mind, like the northern lights or the placebo effect, respectively. Just because we know HOW something “magical” works doesn’t mean it stops being magical. That’s like pointing at a computer and saying it’s just 1s and 0s and metal parts.
Depends on how you define “magical”. To me, a good analogy is horror movies. The less you know about the monster / threat, the more you fill in the gaps the scariest way you can to form a full picture. The more you know about it the less scary it becomes, because you now have information about its limitations and how to avoid it / defeat it.
So to me it’s a tradeoff. If the magic limits are well defined, the story has more opportunities for satisfying problem solving related plot points, but the more you know about it, the less awe-inspiring it becomes
You seem to have read a very limited amount of fantasy books and formed a strange misconception from that limited experience.
Fantasy worlds are all different and there have always been a variety of styles of magic systems and Authors match the magic systems to the worlds.
I'm somewhere in between. However, I tend to incline more to soft magic. The mythical creatures are to blame.
As someone who loves classical and epic fantasy, stuff more in line with pulp and Tolkien, I'll always prefer soft magic systems. I'm also big on history and mythology and not really interested in the sciences. As such, I can appreciate a hard magic system with rationality and laws if its done well. However, I'll always prefer something more mystical and unknowable. Something dangerous and more superstitious in nature.
I hesitate to use ASoIaF as an example because often times it felt like George Martin was just kind of throwing stuff out there and hoping to explain it later... In books he never got around to writing. In stuff like Conan or LoTR it always felt like there could be an explanation but the characters (and therefore the reader) are not aware of the mechanics. The genre is fiction for a reason. That is not to say that hard magic, or magic with a dose of reason, is invalid, but it is not my preference. Each style can be done well, but may also be done poorly.
It seems that by "soft", you simply mean magic isn't fully outlined in the story. You can absolutely have very concrete rules about how magic works and maintain mystery by never explaining those rules to the reader. And any magic system must have at least some concrete rules. Maybe you need a wand to cast spells, maybe all magic is in the form of potions, whatever it is. A story with no rules to its magic would mean the magic was just a way for the author to do whatever they wanted. Which also leaves the reader wondering why magic wasn't used at some point.
Is SCP Foundation hard magic or soft magic? 🤔